


gods & monsters

by MaryPSue



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural, Thor (Movies)
Genre: (sort of?), Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe – Canon Divergence, Amnesia, An Angel Did It, Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Edited from the original posting, Fraught Central Sibling Relationships, Gen, Hunter Loki (Marvel), Hunter Thor (Marvel), John Winchester’s A+ parenting, Odin (Marvel)’s A+ Parenting, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Slow Build, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro, okay more like punching about feeeeeelings, talking about feeeeeelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24423979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: Luke and Tory Winchester hunt monsters.At least, that’s what they both believe.…or, the one where Thor and Loki take an involuntary road trip, meeting two strangers who claim to have had their lives isn’t the weirdest thing that’s happened to Sam and Dean this year or even this week, and (almost) nobody gets killed.
Relationships: Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve spent entirely too much time on this.
> 
> I originally started posting this while I was still writing it, which was a mistake. It has been edited and rewritten into something I’m much happier with, and now I’m posting it again. (Wasn’t it Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing and expecting different results?)
> 
> Because this is a fusion and the two sets of mythology don’t 100% mesh, I’ve played a bit fast and loose with the lore of both series. I’ve also taken some liberties with the timeline and the order of the Supernatural episodes I’ve used, to better support the plot + emotional payoff. Keep reading, all should be made clear.
> 
> Recommended listening: Brother by the Rural Alberta Advantage, and, naturally, Always Gold by Radical Face.

_A single raven perched in a tree with a serpent gnawing at its roots. Light, then shadow, sweep relentlessly over the tree’s nine branches._

_A woman’s smiling face, her blonde curls loose, her white nightgown catching as flames sweep slowly up around her._

_Against a sky dark as a curse, a tower like a golden spire._

_A man, hanging by his feet from a bare white tree, both eyes shut. The waving grass drops sharply off into nothing behind him. In the distance, sunlight shines off the silver sea._

_The man’s single eye snaps open –_

…

Tory Winchester jerks awake, his seatbelt pulling him up short before he can burst out of his seat. He settles back against the leather, breathing hard.

A sudden, irrational fear grips him by the throat. All at once, Tory both _has_ to look over and make sure his brother’s still there, and dreads what he’ll see when he does. He’s afraid that he’ll look and – what? Luke _won’t_ be there? The person sitting in the driver’s seat might look like his brother, but be…someone else? Some _thing_ else?

But it’s just Luke, staring out at the rain sparkling in the headlights, apparently ignoring the pop music spilling quietly from the stereo. As if he feels Tory’s eyes on him, he glances over, one eyebrow quirking up.

Tory breathes out.

“Nightmare,” he says, by way of explanation, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Is…is that Taylor Swift?”

“No,” Luke says, reaching over to swat the button on the stereo. The hum of the road and the drumming of the rain pour softly in to fill the moment of silence before the cassette deck kicks in with a crash, blaring the opening bars of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”.

Tory decides to let it go. “How long was I out?”

“About an hour,” Luke says. “We’re into Kansas now.”

Tory looks out the window, but all he can see are a scattering of distant lights, blurred by the rain.

…

Luke and Tory Winchester hunt monsters.

It’s what they do, who they are, the life they were born to. They hunt monsters, like their father did before them. Like their father _does_ …wherever he’s gone. Like they always have, since their mother’s death put them on this path.

At least, that’s what they both believe.

…

_Then_

“The names Father sent us, what’s the connection between them?”

“Three couples missing over the last three years. All were last heard from just before passing through this junction…very near a place called Burkitsville. Always at the same time of year, right in the early spring.”

“A year between disappearances. We’d never have noticed if Father hadn’t -” Tory started, but Luke sniffed disapprovingly and turned away from him to look out the window.

Tory sighed, running a hand through his hair before turning his attention back to the road. “So when can we expect this next disappearance?”

“If whatever this is sticks to its pattern, the first full moon of spring,” Luke said, not turning away from the window.

“That’s -”

“Tonight.”

Tory drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “And why do you seem so reluctant to go after it?”

“I traced the call.”

“How -”

“Is that really important? Because I’m not going to tell you.” Luke tucked his phone back into the bag at his feet, the small arsenal of amulets and charms he wore around his neck chiming gently as he bent over. “What _is_ important is that our father called from California.”

Tory was silent.

“This could be our best chance to find him,” Luke continued, mulishly. “By the time we’ve dealt with whatever’s in Burkitsville, he could be gone again -”

“And by the time we get back to California, he could still be gone, and another couple will have gone missing,” Tory interrupted. “And we won’t get another shot at this thing until next year.”

“Why are you suddenly so content to do exactly as Father tells us?”

“Why are _you_ so determined to do exactly the opposite of what Father tells us?” Tory repositioned his hands on the wheel, then reached up to pull out and stroke his thumb over the pendant he wore hidden under his shirt, shaking his head. He’d thought they’d put this argument to bed when Luke had come back, after his year on his own. Thought maybe Luke had seen the error of his ways.

Apparently not.

“You can really ask me that? Our father abandoned us. Because he doesn’t think we’re capable of handling ourselves. Again.”

“That’s not true,” Tory said, softly, with a frown, and Luke scoffed loudly.

“Oh yes, you’re right, I forgot. Father doesn’t think _I’m_ capable of handling myself.” His voice dropped into a passable, if extremely sarcastic, imitation of John Winchester’s gravelly baritone. “ _Tory_ , of course, can do no wrong.”

Tory snorted, muttered, “I wish.” He glanced over just in time to catch a glimpse of the venom in the glare Luke shot in his direction. “Father gave us a hunt. Obviously he trusts us to be able to take care of it. We’ll be helping people -”

“And of course it has nothing to do with the opportunity to show off how big and strong and brave you are,” Luke muttered into his hand, leaning his chin in his palm and his elbow against the window.

Tory ignored him. “We’re doing the right thing. That’s enough for me.”

Luke stared out the window for a moment longer, before straightening up with a deep breath in. “Maybe it’s enough for you, but _I_ want some answers. And I’m going to get them, even if I have to find my own way to California.” He stared straight out the windshield, his voice poisonously sweet as he added, “With or without you holding me back.”

Tory’s jaw worked, and his grip tightened on the wheel. He barely stopped to think before swerving sharply into the shoulder, pulling the 1962 Ford Thunderbird to a stop.

“Well, then,” he said, aiming for nonchalance, though even he could hear that it didn’t quite cover the anger in his voice. “Don’t let me _hold you back_. Go get your answers. I’m going on to Burkitsville. We’ll see which of us has actually accomplished something by the time we see each other again.”

Luke looked, for a moment, surprised. Like he might – argue, maybe, or protest, or even plead. Then his expression hardened.

“Fine,” he said, and swung the door open, turning his back on Tory’s surprise at having his bluff called. “Have fun.”

“Luke,” Tory said, softer, but Luke was already pulling open the trunk. “Luke, don’t be an idiot. We’re in the middle of nowhere. How do you intend to get to California?”

“Hitchhike,” Luke said, swinging his duffel bag up onto one shoulder with a smile both bright and extremely sarcastic. “Walk, if I have to.” He paused, his eyes going wide with mock concern. “But if you’re worried you won’t be able to handle whatever’s in Burkitsville all on your own -”

Tory had been starting to think better of pulling over. Had been wondering if he was being too hard on Luke, if he shouldn’t try to smooth this all over. “I’ll deal with it. Myself. Like usual.”

“Good,” Luke said, slamming the trunk shut. “You shouldn’t have any trouble, then.”

“I won’t,” Tory said, still scowling. He leaned over to pull the door to the passenger side closed, and pulled the T-bird out into the road with a crunch of gravel.

It wasn’t long before Luke was no longer visible in the rearview mirror, hidden in the cloud of exhaust and road dust the T-bird left in its wake.

…

_Now_

Luke Winchester keeps his eyes fixed on the road, and doesn’t ask his brother about his nightmare.

There’s more to it than Tory’s said. Luke knows, because he’s been having nightmares too. But if he pushes it, he knows Tory will want to know more about his own dreams. And that’s a can of worms Luke doesn’t want to open.

Tory needs to know Luke’s been dreaming about something terrible happening at a house in Kansas, especially since, lately, Luke’s dreams have literally been coming true. But Tory doesn’t need to know just how long Luke’s been having these dreams. He doesn’t need to know Luke’s been dreaming about the night their mother died, a night Luke barely remembers.

He doesn’t need to know what else Luke’s been dreaming about.

 _\- crawling just under his skin, like an insistent itch he can’t scratch, can’t soothe, something_ wrong –

Tory’s awful hair metal is at least distracting. This song is one of his favourites. Ordinarily, he’d be singing along, strumming an imaginary guitar or shaking his shaggy blond locks as he headbangs. The fact that he’s doing nothing but looking morosely out the window at the distant, rain-warped lights means something about the nightmare he wouldn’t talk about has unsettled him badly.

For a moment, Luke lets himself entertain the idea that Tory’s sharing the same upsetting visions Luke is. That he’s also been seeing their smiling mother go up in flames before his helpless eyes, also been privy to a parade of bizarre and incomprehensible images of black birds and golden towers, also been tormented with images of distant deaths he’ll arrive just too late to prevent.

That Tory’s also been forced to watch, frozen in horror, as something monstrous emerges from where it’s lurked hidden within him all along. Night after agonizing night.

That Tory’s also been forced to wonder whether that, too, is going to come true.

But it’s a foolish thought. Tory’s already suspicious about Luke’s dreams. He doesn’t trust them, thinks they’re a trick, a trap of some kind. Luke knows that doesn’t necessarily translate to Tory not trusting _him_ , but – Tory’s always walked in their father’s footsteps. He’s bought in completely to John Winchester’s policy when it comes to monsters – shoot first, ask questions never. His listening to Luke about Lenore’s coven was an aberration, and it had taken every ounce of persuasive power Luke possessed.

Tory has no sympathy for monsters. And Luke isn’t sure that would change if the monster were his own brother.

So he keeps his mouth shut, and his hands on the wheel, and his eyes on the road.

…

Luke may say he’s only been having the dreams for about a month, but Tory knows he’s lying. Not just because Luke lies as easily, naturally, and often as he breathes.

Because Tory’s been having them too.

Although Tory’s dreams are a lot less clear than Luke’s. Even downright cryptic. He definitely hasn’t been able to get any street addresses out of them, the way Luke did.

Luke’s unusually straightforward prophetic dreams are why they’re currently on their way to Lawrence, Kansas, where there’s… _something_. Luke says it’s a case, though Tory isn’t convinced. In fact, he’s not convinced it isn’t something else entirely.

Like, for example, a trap.

He hasn’t thought too long or hard about who might have set such a trap, or why. But – they still haven’t found their father. Since Burkitsville, his phone number has gone straight to a recorded message saying it’s out of service when Tory tries to call. And it’s been far, far too long since he last got in touch to throw a hunt their way.

And Tory’s been dreaming about their mother, about the impossible fire the night she died. The fire that started all of this, that put first their father and then Tory and Luke onto this road.

Something isn’t right.

But maybe the only way to find out _what_ isn’t right is to walk right in. In Tory’s experience, the best way to find out if something is a trap is to spring it.

…

_Then_

Coming face-to-face with the scarecrow was worse, somehow, now that Tory knew for sure that there was a malicious intelligence behind those empty, desiccated eye sockets. Its leathery patchwork of stolen skin seemed extra grotesque in the darkness, farther advanced in decay than it had been when Tory had climbed the ladder to get a good look the day before.

The smell was _horrible_.

Tory braced himself, considering whether he had enough leverage to kick the thing over with his legs still bound together and his arms tied behind the tree. But the Old Norse harvest god inhabiting the scarecrow didn’t whip out its big sickle knife and start slicing. Instead, the ragged flaps of skin covering what remained of its nose fluttered as it – sniffed? Sniffed at the air around Tory. In the quiet of the orchard, with its rotting face thrust agonisingly close to Tory’s, the snuffling noise it made was almost worse than the smell.

Then it froze.

It regarded Tory for what felt like an eternity, both of them motionless. The Vanir’s eyes were nothing but black holes in its weathered face, but Tory could swear he could still feel its gaze boring down into his chest.

Tory looked down, but saw nothing unusual. There was just the little metal pendant he always wore, the one shaped like a stylized anchor.

Just when Tory was starting to think he couldn’t take much more suspense, that he’d start yelling until either he clawed his way free or it killed him, the Vanir gave him one last, penetrating look.

Then it turned, and disappeared back into the orchard and the mist.

…

_Now_

The young blonde woman who opens the front door for them has a toddler clutched close to her chest and dark circles under her eyes like she hasn’t slept in a week. She plasters on an apologetic grin, barely glancing in their direction, and Tory knows before she even opens her mouth that she’s going to very politely tell them to get off her doorstep.

Of course, that’s before Luke opens his mouth.

“Good afternoon. I hope we’re not bothering you.” Tory slaps on a smile that he hopes looks sincere and charming when Luke drives an elbow into his ribs. Luke doesn’t give the woman time to speak, to say that actually, they are, this is a bad time, come back never. “My brother and I grew up here – in this house, actually. We were in town on business, and I managed to persuade him to stop to see what it looks like now.”

Tory manages, through enormous force of will, not to let his mouth fall open. That’s not at _all_ the cover story they’d agreed to in the car.

The young woman gives them both a once-over. The toddler squawks, and she gives him a few bounces on her hip, lowering her head to press her face into his fair curls. When she looks up again, her expression has gone from outright dismissive to considering.

“I can’t say it’s a great time for me right now,” she says. “What did you say your names were?”

“Winchester. Lukas and Torvald Winchester. He’s going to insist you call him Tory, I have _no_ idea why,” Luke says, the picture of practiced innocence.

The woman doesn’t laugh, but she does crack a smile that actually looks genuine, this time. “Well, Lukas -”

“Luke.”

“Luke and Tory, it’s very nice to meet you.” She shifts the toddler on her hip with an apologetic smile. “I’m Jenny. Hands a little full to shake right now, sorry.”

Luke smiles back. “Pleasure’s all ours. I hope you’re liking the place. Do you still have the problem with those annoying drafts? Our father never could figure out why the house had so many stubborn cold spots.”

Jenny hesitates a moment longer, but then the baby hiccups and tugs at her hair, and she breaks into another smile, shaking her head. “Mostly in the kitchen. I think they must’ve put the heating vent behind the refrigerator or something.”

Luke rolls his eyes. “I know what you mean. Between that and the old wiring, my brother was half-convinced the house was haunted.”

Tory manages to recover himself enough to interject. “Really? As I recall, it was _you_ who slept with a nightlight long past sixth grade.”

The glare Luke shoots him gets an actual giggle out of Jenny. She shakes her head, smiling. “Sounds like my daughter. She’s nearly ten, but she’s started sleeping with her nightlight again ever since we moved in. Says there’s a monster in her closet, but I think it’s just -” She cuts herself off, sobering. “I can’t blame her, though, these flickering lights are driving even me up the wall. I thought they would’ve updated the wiring when they renovated, but I guess that’s why the place was such a steal.”

Luke raises his eyebrows. “Oh, so they didn’t tell you about the wiring? But they must have at least let you know about the insulation?”

“Insulation?”

“Oh, they _didn’t_ tell you? I suppose they talked up how ‘charming’ the place is. How much ‘character’ it has. Now you know that’s real estate agent code for ‘old and drafty’.” He glances back at Tory, briefly, before adding, as though it’s an afterthought, “I never would have guessed it had been renovated. The old place looks the same from the outside. I’d love to see whether they kept any of our mother’s hideous striped wallpaper.”

“Can’t imagine they’ve left your room the way it was,” Tory says, deciding that if this is the act they’re putting on, he might as well settle into his part. “Not many people choose to decorate with black on black on black.”

Luke shoots him a venomous look.

Jenny grins with her lips pressed inwards, like she isn’t sure whether to laugh. “Well, I don’t know what it looked like before, but the realtor said they had to do lot of work on the house after the fire.”

“Fire?” Tory asks.

“Oh. It must’ve been after you moved out. Terrible thing. There was a family living here, a young couple and their two boys – apparently the mother died.” Jenny gives the baby another, self-conscious bounce, tightening her grip a little and ignoring his grumble. “But the place is beautiful now. You’d never know there’d been any damage.”

“Small mercies,” Luke says, and maybe only Tory knows him well enough to hear how rattled he sounds. Tory can’t blame him. They came here because of one of Luke’s dreams, and now they find that a young mother of two boys died in a house fire here.

Just like their own mother had.

Jenny bites her bottom lip for a moment before meeting Luke’s eyes. “Would you two like to come in and have a look around? It might be interesting to get the scoop on the house’s issues from somebody who’s not trying to sell it to me.”

“I can see you’ve got your hands full,” Luke says, recovering quickly. “It’s very kind of you to offer, but we couldn’t possibly -”

“Oh, come on,” Jenny says. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t sound like you’re in town often. I can’t exactly leave you standing out on the doorstep. Besides, it’s been a while since I had a conversation with another adult, I’d almost forgotten what it’s like.”

She turns and disappears into the house, leaving the door open behind her. Luke looks back over his shoulder, shooting Tory a smug grin, and Tory can’t hold back any longer.

“What was all that?” he hisses, under his breath, as he follows Luke into the hallway.

“You saw her with that baby. She’s obviously sentimental right now, especially about children and childhood homes, it was a perfect lever. And it worked, didn’t it? We’re inside.” His smile grows wider, more knifelike. “ _And_ , she thinks it was all her idea.”

“What about the gas main leak?”

“Tell me, honestly. When has the gas main leak excuse ever worked?”

Tory doesn’t have a good answer for that, so he stays silent.

“Also, now we know the house has all the signs of a haunting _and_ who the most likely culprit is,” Luke continues, looking and sounding like the cat who got the cream. “And she likes us. She’ll be more likely to let us back in without getting suspicious. Would that have worked if she thought we were meter readers?”

Tory doesn’t want to admit that it probably would not have. “We never lived here, though. We won’t remember this house. Don’t you think it’ll look a little suspicious, us having supposedly grown up here but not knowing where anything is?”

Luke tosses his head dismissively. “You heard what she said. They renovated after the fire. She doesn’t know what it looked like before. Just make something up.”

“That’s what I was afraid you’d say,” Tory sighs, following his brother down the hall.

Jenny stops in front of a door, beaming back at them. “I have a box of things I found down here in the basement that I think might belong to you. Winchester, you said, right?”

Luke and Tory exchange a look.

…

_Then_

It wasn’t long before the shape of the scarecrow was swallowed completely in the mist.

It took Tory two tries to get his throat to work. “Darcy?”

“Not dead!”

Relief pulsed through Tory like a shot of ice water. “Good! Keep it that way!” he called back, renewing his efforts rubbing the rope binding his hands together against the tree’s rough bark.

“There’s an easier way to do that, you know,” a fantastically familiar voice said, very close behind Tory, and the ropes holding Tory’s hands suddenly gave way with a snap.

“Luke!” Tory said, twisting to face his brother as Luke stepped out from behind the tree Tory had recently been tied to. The memory of the last time they’d seen each other did put a damper on the reunion, but not enough to totally overshadow the wave of relief and gratitude that swept over Tory at the sight of his brother’s grin. “How long were you standing there?”

Luke blinked, the very picture of wounded innocence. “I only just got here as the monster was leaving.”

Tory considered the likelihood of that statement, and then decided not to push it. “You didn’t go to California?” He reached up and took the knife from Luke, leaning down to cut the ropes binding his ankles at the same time as Darcy rushed over, from somewhere in the trees to Tory’s left.

Luke shrugged one shoulder, his smile bright and meaningless. “You know I’ve never really been the sun, sand, and surf type. And of course, I knew how lost you’d be without me.”

“I had it handled,” Tory grumbled. Still, he took the hand Luke held out gratefully, let Luke help him to his now-unbound feet. “Rock salt doesn’t work on that thing,” he added, noticing the shotgun Luke held in his other hand.

“I noticed,” Luke said, wryly. “What is it?”

“Not sure I care,” Darcy said. “Hi. Darcy Lewis, not interested in being a human sacrifice. How about we get out of here before that thing decides to come back?”

…

_Now_

The box is full of photographs and trinkets, cards for Christmas and birthdays, postcards from state parks and tourist traps, baseball cards, odds and ends of boyhood. Tory pulls out an interesting-looking rock, turns it over and over in his hands, puts it back and pulls out a stone arrowhead instead, giving it the same treatment.

Luke is still sitting, as though frozen into a solid sculpture of ice, staring at the photograph.

“Luke?” Tory asks, tentatively, at last, and with a shiver, his brother shakes the ice from his shoulders.

“Winchester,” Luke says, hollowly, not taking his eyes from the photo in his hand. “John and Mary Winchester.”

“They’re not uncommon names -” Tory tries, and Luke’s eyes flick up, the only part of him that moves, to fix Tory with a baleful green stare from under a furrowed brow.

“Look at the damn picture, Tory.”

Tory doesn’t need to. He’s seen it twice since Luke pulled it from the box, he knows what it shows. This house, with the enormous tree in its front yard. His and Luke’s parents, young and in the full bloom of love, neither of them on fire. Their two sons.

Their two sons who are not Tory and Luke.

All right, so the baby _could_ be Luke, maybe, if it weren’t for the fact that the grinning four-year-old in the picture with them isn’t Tory and that he and Luke have never seen this house before in their lives. And the names written on the back of the picture. _John & Mary. Sam & Dean._

Those names repeat, throughout the box, inside birthday cards and in clumsy pencil on postcards, crayoned at the bottom of macaroni art and carefully calligraphed onto a piece of paper that holds one tiny, inky footprint. _Sam & Dean_. A whole other family, two entire brothers, who Tory knows nothing about.

“Maybe…” he says, thinking aloud. “Before they had us -”

“You heard what she said,” Luke snaps. “The mother died. In a fire. Here.”

“Then, after -”

“You’re the one who remembers her. Dying. In a fire. In _Minnesota_.”

“It could all be fake,” Tory tries, stubbornly, even though he does remember. Too well.

“To what end? Why would anyone go to all this trouble to fabricate this – this secret life for our parents?” In a sudden burst of motion, Luke flings the photo like a Frisbee. It skims across the floor to rest against Tory’s knees.

“How should I know? You’re the one who likes elaborate plots and mind games. I just want to know how to kill the monster of the week,” Tory says, determinedly not looking down at the photo. The face in that photograph is the same one he last saw contorted in a scream and ringed in flames. The same one he saw smiling peacefully through rising fire, in a dream, as they were driving into town.

“Salt and burn,” Luke snaps, caustic. “It’s just a ghost. Just our _mother’s_ ghost. Who shouldn’t be here in the first place and may not really have been our mother. How could it possibly be more straightforward?”

“You don’t have to be so…so sarcastic about it,” Tory grumbles, dropping the arrowhead back into the box with a quiet metal _plink_. He takes a deep breath before pushing himself up off the basement floor, dusting off the knees of his jeans. “Sit here and brood on it, if that’s what you feel will help. There’s a ghost upstairs that I know I can actually do something about.”

Luke doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t make a move to get up. He just sits and glares into the box until Tory starts towards the stairs. Tory can’t be sure, since he’s already turning away, but he thinks he catches a glimpse of Luke leaning forward to scoop the photo back up off the floor.

_John & Mary._

_Sam & Dean._

Tory shakes his head, like he can dislodge the thought with enough force, and fishes in his jacket pocket for the EMF meter as he takes the rickety wooden stairs two at a time.

…

_Then_

“You’re not going anywhere,” the Burkitsville sheriff said, jerking the shotgun’s nose out of Tory’s face and in Luke’s direction. Luke stopped mid-sidle, raising both knives and making a show of dropping them both. This obviously didn’t mean he was helpless, but it still didn’t make Tory feel particularly confident.

He felt even less confident when the other townsfolk came out of the orchard’s billowing mist to encircle them, with more shotguns and knives and even an honest-to-goodness pitchfork. Darcy tensed up at the sight of her aunt, and jabbed her borrowed knife at the woman with no apparent regard for the gun her aunt was holding. “What’d you do with my taser?”

“You honestly thought we’d leave a taser on you?” Darcy’s aunt said, looking horrified. “Your uncle still has pins and needles!”

Darcy raised her chin defiantly and gave a grim smile. “Well, maybe he shouldn’t have tried to feed me to the mythology.”

“Please understand. This is the only way we can protect our home.” Darcy’s aunt almost looked enraptured, beaming as she said, “It has to be you, you’re the only one left. It’s not a sacrifice if it isn’t something you love -”

Her words were cut short when Darcy’s uncle suddenly sputtered. Tory looked over just in time to see a gout of blood burst from the man’s chest, followed quickly by the point of a sickle-shaped blade. Dark blood spattered across Darcy’s face and Tory’s shirt. He wasn’t sure who screamed.

The scarecrow that housed the Vanir met Tory’s eyes over Darcy’s uncle’s shoulder, its empty-socket gaze boring deep. It didn’t move, didn’t so much as shift the blade impaling its prey, seemingly unbothered by the bullet Darcy’s aunt fired at it.

The Vanir inclined its borrowed head sideways towards its sacrifice, its eyeless eyes never leaving Tory’s face.

Tory glanced down at Darcy, who was wiping blood off her face with a look of stunned horror, and then back up at the still, silent Vanir.

And nodded. Just a little. Just once.

The Vanir nodded back, the brim of its floppy hat momentarily concealing its empty eye sockets.

And then it grabbed a handful of Darcy’s aunt’s hair and, ignoring her screams, dragged her and her husband both into the mist.

…

_Now_

“What’s that?”

Tory looks up from the flashing, beeping EMF meter straight into the suspicious glare of a nine-year-old girl. He waves the device in her general direction. “It’s an EMF meter.”

The girl crosses her arms over her chest and squints. “Why’s it doing that?”

“Because you’ve got high electro-magnetic frequencies in here,” Tory says, looking around the kitchen. _Very_ high, in fact. If there’s a ghost in the house, it was active here recently. And it’s strong.

The girl wrinkles her nose. “Why?”

“Well, it could be a lot of things,” Tory says, shutting the meter off. “Electrical wires can set it off. So can big motors, sometimes.” He looks left, then right, and when he doesn’t see the girl’s mother, crouches down to about eye level. “And sometimes, ghosts.”

The girl looks at him like she’d gladly stab him in the eye. “You’re lying. Grown-ups don’t believe in ghosts. Did Mom get you to come here and talk to me about the monster? Because I’m _not_ crazy.”

“I know you’re not,” Tory tries, though the girl looks less than reassured. If anything, she’s more pissed off.

“And it’s not ‘just stress’ because Dad’s gone and we had to move, either! There’s a monster, in my closet, and it’s on _fire_.”

Tory nods. “Tell me, does it get really cold in your room before you see the monster?”

The girl’s eyes narrow into almost perfectly straight lines, and she takes one quick step backwards. “You’re weird,” she says, with all the conviction and authority of a middle-grader. “And you’ve got girly hair.”

Tory straightens up, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s not girly. Lots of men wear braids. And some people might say sleeping with a nightlight when you’re nearly ten is weird.”

The girl tilts her chin up to keep her glare on him, defiant. “Some people are stupid.”

Tory can’t help it. He laughs. The girl looks, again, like she’d gladly stab him and watch him bleed.

“Well, you’re not wrong,” he says.

And that’s when the doorbell rings.

The girl takes off running, and Tory follows her, but they both get to the door just as Jenny is opening it. The shorter of the two men on the doorstep turns a winning smile in her direction as soon as the door opens, like seeing her is a wonderful surprise. Then his eyes skip over to Tory coming down the hall behind her and the smile loses a little of its luster.

“Hi,” he says, turning back to Jenny, after an assessing and slightly alarmed look at Tory’s shoulders. “I’m Dean, Dean Winchester, this here’s my brother Sam.”

Sam offers a smile and a little wave. “This might seem a little strange, but…this was our house when we were kids.”

…

Jenny threatens to call the cops if they don’t all get the hell out, right now.

“Well, that went great. Just fantastic,” the man who’d introduced himself as Dean Winchester growls, apparently to the neighbourhood at large, before rounding on Tory and Luke. He has to raise his voice to be heard over the wind that’s picked up. “You two amateur-hour Ghostbuster wannabes have no idea how bad you just screwed up, do you?”

For once, Luke doesn’t seem to have a smart-mouthed comeback at the ready – or really to be listening at all - so the honour falls to Tory. “ _We_ screwed up? _We_ were in and working the case -”

“Oh yeah? You got any clue what’s in that house?” Dean demands, ignoring his brother’s long-suffering sigh. When he squares up to Tory, Dean only comes up to his nose, but he still looks ready to take a swing.

“It’s a spirit -” Tory starts.

“Yeah, no shit it’s a spirit. Where’d you two bozos crawl out of, anyway, some internet chatroom?”

“Dean,” Sam sighs.

“It’s _our house_ , Sammy! _Our_ mom! They got no right -”

There’s a metallic _snap_ as Luke drops the lockbox full of photos on the sidewalk, the lid popping open, photos and trinkets scattering. The wind catches some of the photos, swirling them off into the street. Dark spots bloom on some of the others, and it takes Tory until a cold droplet strikes the back of his neck to realise that it’s started to rain. He’s not sure where the clouds that have rolled in came from, but they look ominous.

Luke meets Tory’s eyes, just for a second, before he turns and stalks across the yard, headed for the T-bird parked across the street. Tory’s certain he had the keys in his jacket pocket when they’d left the house, but he feels for them after Luke swings the driver’s side door open with no trouble, and finds his pockets empty. Less than a minute later, the T-bird’s engine roars to life, and Luke peels off, apparently without so much as a glance back over his shoulder.

Tory sighs, scrubbing a hand across his face. Suddenly, he feels very, very tired.

“Check the daughter’s room,” he says. “She says there’s a monster in her closet, and that it’s on fire. Sounds like the mother’s ghost. And there’s _something_ in the kitchen that set off the EMF -”

“Thanks,” Dean snaps. “We’ll be sure to call you if we ever need somebody to nearly get an innocent family all killed.”

“Dean!” Sam says, shaking his head as he turns to Tory. “Sorry about my brother. This hunt…”

“It’s always harder when it’s personal,” Tory agrees.

He hesitates, for a moment, because he really doesn’t know what’s going on and if he had thought it was a trap, two other experienced hunters definitely will. Won’t they?

“It’s personal for us, too,” he says, at last. “Because, until today, Luke and I were absolutely certain that the John and Mary Winchester in those photos…” He gestures towards the mess Luke left on the sidewalk, quickly getting soaked in the steadily-increasing rain. “Were _our_ parents.”

He’s not exactly expecting the reaction he gets. Sam looks sideswiped, like something was thrown right past his face and he didn’t notice until it had already gone by. Dean’s jaw just works, his expression determinedly not changing.

“I need a drink,” he says, finally, and turns, slouching off down the sidewalk towards the gleaming black ’67 Chevy Impala parked in front of the house.

He stops with the driver’s side door open, glaring back at Sam and Tory. “You guys coming or what?”

…

_Then_

Tory fiddled with the dials of the radio, until the static resolved into a guitar riff. He drummed along on the steering wheel, watching the power poles flash past.

They’d burned the tree with the runes etched into its trunk, the one that was sacred to the Vanir. It shouldn’t be back. The nightmare in Burkitsville should be over.

But there was still one important thing left to do.

“Thank you for coming back. Back there in the orchard, I mean,” Tory said, at last, with a glance over at his brother. “And…at all. I don’t know where you went or what you got up to, this past year, though I think…I may be beginning to understand _why_ you went.”

Luke didn’t answer, turning to stare out the passenger-side window. “You kicked me out on the side of the road.”

“I shouldn’t have,” Tory said. “I mean, I should know by now that you’re very irritating.”

“Is this supposed to be an apology?” Luke asked. “Because so far, it’s not a good one.”

“You made it clear, when you left, that you didn’t need us. When you said you were going to California with or without me -” Tory shook his head. “I should know by now that you just wanted to see how far you could push. Shouldn’t have let you get to me.”

Luke didn’t say anything this time, but – Tory thought, Tory hoped - his silence seemed more thoughtful than sulky.

“Why _did_ you come back?” Tory asked, finally. “Instead of going to California? I thought you were going to get your answers, no matter what. What made you change your mind?”

Luke was silent for so long that Tory started to think he wasn’t going to get a response.

“Oh, I’m still going to get answers,” Luke said, at last. “And I’m finished with following Father’s orders. I hope you understand by now that that’s why I left the life in the first place.”

Tory nodded.

Luke turned to look out the window again. Tory almost missed it under the music and the hiss of the road falling away beneath them when he added, “But _Father_ isn’t the reason I came back.”

The song on the radio ended, and a juddering bassline started, broken by the dulcet wails of Robert Plant’s voice.

“Zep again?” Luke asked, rolling his eyes.

“I like them,” Tory said, to the steering wheel.

When he looked over, Luke’s smile was softer, fonder. He turned his face away quickly, but not quickly enough that Tory didn’t notice.

…

_Now_

The bar Dean chooses is a dive, with a life-sized neon sign of a girl in short shorts and a cowboy hat kicking one leg robotically out and back in again, out and back in again. The bartop is sticky, and the beer is flat, but the bartender is young and pretty and obviously responding to Dean’s flirting.

“So,” Sam says, spinning his beer on the bartop. “We’re…what, long-lost brothers?”

Tory shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s possible. Your mother died in -”

“Eighty-three,” Sam says. “The same year I was born.”

“That’s the year Luke was born,” Tory says. “The year our mother died. We were living in Minnesota. There was a fire – it started in the nursery. She was -”

He stops. The memory is a little hazy with age and adrenaline, but carved deep with horror and grief. In his wildest dreams, Tory’s never imagined that it could be anything but real.

“On the ceiling,” he says, finally.

Dean slams his beer down on the bartop. “This is a load of crap,” he says, his voice rising towards the end of the sentence. “You hearing this, Sam? _Crap_.”

“I don’t know, Dean,” Sam says, sparing him a glance. His hands don’t stop moving, spinning and spinning and spinning his bottle of beer between his palms. “How would they know, if -”

“No. Dean’s right to be suspicious,” Tory says.

“Damn right I am,” Dean says. “Just ‘cause you passed the tests, just means you’re not a demon or a shapeshifter. Doesn’t mean you’re on the level.”

“When’s the last time you heard from your dad?” Sam asks, making eye contact with Tory with a genuine expression of concern. It’s good. It’s very sincere. Luke’s perfected almost exactly the same expression for interviews with survivors of monster attacks – and those they suspect _are_ the monsters.

He also has a bad habit of using it whenever he’s filled Tory’s duffel bag with itching powder or short-sheeted his bed, but that’s not really what Tory’s worried about right now.

“It was – months. He sent us a list of names, couples who’d gone missing around a place called -”

“Burkitsville,” Dean interrupts, unexpectedly. “So you’re the ones who sniped that hunt out from under us. But – _we_ got those names from Dad.”

“What was it?” Sam asks. “The thing in Burkitsville?”

“Vanir. Old Norse harvest god,” Tory says. “The town was giving it sacrifices. We burned its sacred tree, it shouldn’t be back.”

Sam and Dean exchange a look.

“Well, that much at least checks out,” Sam says, finally stopping with the beer-spinning long enough to take a drink. “How’d you end up here?”

‘Prophetic dreams’ doesn’t exactly make Luke and Tory sound more credible. Tory settles on, “We were passing through. There was some chatter about a haunting. We were investigating when you showed up.” He hates lying. It always seems to involve remembering so much, keeping so much straight in his head. When he can, he uses as much of the truth as possible.

“Uh huh,” Dean says. “And you just _happened_ to be on the premises when we showed up. Pretty convenient timing.”

Tory doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just shrugs.

“So, you two grew up with Dad, on the road,” Sam says, just a little too thoughtfully, like a TV lawyer gently easing the witness on the stand into a series of questions that will end with a tearful confession and win them the case. “You guys have to remember staying with Larry Crenshaw, then, right?”

It’s a trap, of some kind, but Tory can’t see its teeth.

“No,” he says, honestly. “We didn’t meet many people. Not ones who we’d know for more than a week, anyway. Father had friends, but…we didn’t stay with any of them. And I don’t remember a Larry Crenshaw being one of them, either.”

Sam glances over at Dean, raising one eyebrow.

“Well, that’s real good for you,” Dean says. “ ‘Cause Larry Crenshaw don’t exist. My smartass brother made him up to catch you in a lie.” He grins, sarcastic. “But congratulations, you passed the test. Guess you can’t possibly be lying about having had _our life_!”

“Dean,” Sam sighs, again.

“You can’t actually be buying this garbage, Sam!”

Sam grits his teeth, staring at the wall of bottles behind the bar with the half-smile of someone trying very hard not to lose their cool over their brother’s ridiculousness. Not that Tory’s familiar with the expression.

“Do I think that, somehow, there were two parallel versions of us growing up with the same John Winchester as their dad? _No_ , Dean. But _something’s_ going on here, and it might be related to the case.”

“Or it might be a sack of crap,” Dean says. “Which is what it sounds like.”

He slams back the last of his beer and drops a couple of bills on the bar, getting to his feet. “I’m heading back to the motel. You coming, or you wanna blow some more smoke up the blonder version of me’s ass?”

Sam raises a hand to rub the bridge of his nose.

“Yeah, okay, I’m coming,” he sighs.

…

_Then_

It was the alligator in the sewer that made the case weird.

A vengeful spirit clinging to life long after it should have moved on, killing people in a mad, misguided rage? Par for the course. That spirit’s story not seeming to match that of anyone who ever died on campus? Not all that unusual – records weren’t always accurate, ghosts could migrate if their remains did, and there were plenty of things that could create a powerful spirit beyond a simple bloody death, though they didn’t usually look so human. But someone getting their arm ripped off by something in a storm drain, something that the victim swore blind was an alligator?

Of course, it wasn’t until the alien abduction that Luke realised what was going on.

“Urban legends,” he was in the middle of saying, excitedly, as he pushed the motel room door open. “Tall tales. I’m sure of it. They’re coming true, here. Whatever’s at work here is using stories -”

He stopped, only a few steps into the room, looking at the glaringly empty space on the nightstand where his laptop had been when he’d left the room that morning. It didn’t take him long to find it, sitting on the bed Tory had claimed. With the lid open. And the keyboard smashed. Exactly as though somebody had pounded their fist into the very middle of it.

“I did _not_ do that!” Tory protested, into the teeth of the glare Luke turned on him.

“But you were using my laptop?”

“Only to research deaths on campus, I certainly didn’t -” Tory gestured, with one hand, towards the laptop.

“Then who did?” Luke asked. “Did someone break in just to vent their irrational, uncontrollable anger on my laptop?”

Tory just shrugged.

Luke straightened up, slamming the lid of the laptop shut – as much as he could with keys flying everywhere. “I don’t complain often about living on the road, staying in fleabag motels, never really having anything to call my own -”

“Oh, you don’t?” Tory said, crossing his arms over his chest and squaring his stance in the doorway as Luke stuffed his laptop into his messenger bag. “I never would have realised if you hadn’t told me.”

“All I ask,” Luke ground out, between clenched teeth, deliberately ignoring his brother with a patience that had been long tested, “is that you respect what little is mine, instead of treating it the way you treat everything else.”

Tory was dangerously, thunderously silent as Luke slung his bag back over his shoulder. He didn’t move as Luke approached the door, and the way he glowered made Luke feel the tiny height difference between them like a massive distance.

“Everything else?” Tory said, not budging from the doorway.

“You break things,” Luke snapped. “You get angry, or insulted, or bored, and you get careless, and you break things. Valuable things. Just because you can.”

For a moment, Luke thought his brother might actually take a swing at him, and tensed, preparing himself to duck. But instead, Tory said, “That fault’s not _mine_ , little brother. Or at least not mine alone.”

Luke glared at his brother. Tory glared back.

“Get out of my way,” Luke said, at last.

He didn’t think Tory would. He fully expected Tory to stay standing there, filling the doorway. And if it came to blows, which it would have if Tory didn’t move, Luke fully expected to lose. But he was prepared to take a chunk or two of his brother with him when he went down.

But then Tory seemed to deflate, letting his arms swing awkwardly loose at his sides as he stepped forward. “Luke -”

Luke shouldered past him, slamming the door shut behind him as he stormed out onto the sidewalk.

…

_Now_

The rain and wind have turned to a full-blown thunderstorm by the time Luke pulls into the motel parking lot. The rain hammers down on him as he dashes from the T-bird to the door. By the time he gets the key to turn in the lock, he’s soaked to the skin.

He shucks his clothes almost as soon as he shuts the door behind him, the layers of jeans and flannel and long-sleeved black tee sticking to each other and his skin, plastered down with water. His jewelry he takes a little more care with, charms and talismans and amulets, pendants and bracelets woven with spells for everything from protection and healing to instant curses, just add blood. He piles them carefully on the counter beside the sink. Then he showers, with the water turned up as hot as he can stand.

Luke loses some time standing under the water. When he steps out of the shower, it’s dark outside, the rain lashing against the bathroom’s narrow, high window lit by the occasional bright burst of lightning. Luke pulls the curtains on the big picture window in the main room, blocking out the wild night, before taking out his laptop and sitting down on one of the beds to work.

The other Winchesters haven’t left much of an impact on the internet. And what impact they _have_ made is…strange. Dean, apparently, is wanted in connection with a string of high-profile, violent home-invasion murders – or was, until he was shot dead. And both brothers have a small but dedicated fan following – who seem to think they’re fictional. Which, if the website of one Carver Edlund’s publishing house is to be believed, they are.

The tight band of barely-controlled panic constricting Luke’s chest eases, just a little.

And yet…even if Luke tries to tell himself the other Winchesters are some kind of – _something_ in disguise, borrowing the names and lives of fictional hunters to prey on innocent people, he can’t forget the photo.

His and Tory’s parents. The Lawrence house. Two boys who aren’t Luke and Tory. Their father’s familiar handwriting, naming the boys Sam and Dean.

However Luke tries to turn it in his head, he can’t explain the photo away.

On a hunch, he looks up the thing from Burkitsville. Vanir, Tory had called it. The name had rung a bell, but Luke hadn’t been able to place it. Tory’s brief and confused explanation about Old Norse harvest gods hadn’t clarified much, either. The website Luke finds offers a clearer picture, though it still seems that some things were lost in translation.

He does gather that the Vanir were a group, possibly a family, of gods. Like the – Luke does a double-take. Like the Æsir.

He _knew_ he’d known the word from somewhere.

According to at least one version of the myths, the Æsir and Vanir had fought to a wary truce. And, for all that they’d eventually intermarried and apparently set aside their animosity, that truce had involved what sounds very much like an exchange of hostages.

It sounds, Luke reflects, like the kind of truce that one wouldn’t want to break unless one was very sure one wanted another bitter war. The kind of fragile peace that might be threatened by, say, taking a sacrifice that the other side had already laid claim to. Especially if the other side had a notoriously volatile temper and the firepower to back it up.

In Luke’s mind’s eye, the scarecrow once more stared down at his brother, before turning and simply walking into the mist, leaving Tory unharmed. Luke could’ve sworn those empty eye sockets had rested their sightless gaze directly on his own hiding spot, as well, as it had passed by, too close for comfort. But it hadn’t stopped, only kept moving until it vanished from sight.

It had been strange. Strange enough that Luke had taken notice when the scarecrow’d appeared again and stabbed Darcy’s uncle. While everyone else had been panicking, watching the knife, Luke had been watching the scarecrow’s empty eyes. Had seen its head turn towards Tory, before it grabbed Darcy’s aunt, seen it pause. Almost like it was asking permission.

Had seen Tory nod. Almost like he was giving it.

There isn’t much more about the Vanir in general, the rest of the page dedicated to the gods Freyr and Freyja. Luke clicks through to the page on the Æsir. It feels a little like masochism, for reasons he isn’t sure he can put into words. Isn’t sure he wants to. All he knows is that it’s going to hurt, and he couldn’t stop if he wanted to.

Like he’d expected, the most recognisable names in the Norse pantheon are among the Æsir. Thor, Odin…and Loki.

…

_Then_

“Oh, hey, good. I was trying to get you alone.”

Luke looked up from the counter of the IT desk where he’d dropped his laptop off. It took him a moment to place the man smiling up at him – the janitor who’d been locking up the office building where Luke had met Tory the previous night.

Obviously Luke’s expression told a story, because the janitor grinned sheepishly. “Right, that sounds – I mean, give you an excuse to come talk to me. Without the…big guy.”

“You broke my laptop?” Luke asked, and the janitor shrugged, with a beatific, innocent smile. It was a good one. It put Luke’s own to shame. The janitor must have really practiced.

“Yeah, sorry about that, but you can fix that easy, right? I didn’t know you were going to be in town. I like the new look, very...” Luke didn’t like the dismissive look the janitor gave his suit. It was a nice suit. Luke had spent far too much time picking it out and probably paid too much for it. Well, technically “Oswald Cobblepot” had paid too much for it, but still. It was the principle of the thing. And in Luke’s considered opinion, any credit card company that didn’t check that the applications coming in weren’t submitted by comic book characters deserved to get fleeced.

“Very Anne Rice. So is it just you, or are all the Æsir going through a goth phase? Should I be keeping an eye out -” The janitor winked, obviously pleased with his own joke. “- for old One-Eye in black eyeliner?”

Luke managed, barely, to bite back the flood of questions. He had a feeling that letting on that he had no idea what was going on would be extremely unwise. And another, nagging feeling that maybe he had more idea of what was going on than he thought. _Æsir_ – the word was familiar, for some reason, but he couldn’t place it.

Just who was this person? And who exactly did he think Luke was?

Taking a chance, Luke said, “That’d truly be a sight for sore eyes – eye, anyway.” When the janitor’s nose crinkled up in a smile, he added, “These urban legends are your handiwork?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve been reading a lot of Weekly World News, you would not believe, some of the stuff these humans come up with…” The janitor sighed happily, leaning one elbow against the counter. “Well, maybe _you’d_ believe. They’re just so creative! Half the time I barely even have to do anything. Just give ‘em a nudge and they’ll trick themselves.”

“Just so we’re clear,” Luke said, at last, thinking furiously. “You haven’t spoken to anyone else about me, have you?”

“No, I don’t exactly feel like blowing my own cover. And I wasn’t even totally sure it was you until a minute ago.” A little nervousness crept back into the janitor’s nonchalant expression as he said, “You don’t mind me using the name, right? It’s just, better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, _you_ know. And I didn’t even know for sure if you guys were still around, you’ve been pretty quiet since Norway converted -”

Luke interrupted the stream of babble before it got any weirder. “What name?”

The janitor eyeballed him like Luke had just asked what planet they were on. “The _name_. The reputation. Silvertongue. Liesmith. Sky-walker, though Lucasfilm has a monopoly on that one now. Tried to get Georgie Porgy back for that with a prequel or two, but it backfired spectacularly, now he’s making money hand over fist from all the merchandise.”

When Luke failed to give whatever response the janitor was obviously expecting, the man rolled his eyes. “ _Loki_.”

It took all of Luke’s considerable practice and self-control not to yell, “What?”.

Instead, he looked down at his lapel, brushing away an imaginary fleck of dust and adjusting his cuffs while he arranged his expression into something less stupefied. “Oh. Yes. I don’t care.” Probably the first true thing he’d said in the entire conversation. “Keep using it, if you like. I hate to cut this conversation short, but I have to get back. The, uh, big guy will be wondering where I am.”

The look the janitor was giving him was, for the first time, appropriately suspicious, but Luke didn’t wait around for him to put two and two together and realise Luke wasn’t - whoever he thought he was. He took his bag and his coat and walked out with all the dignity and aplomb he could muster.

And tried very hard not to think about what kind of grisly urban legend might suddenly come to life and eat his face before he could make it back to the motel.

…

_Now_

They’re staying at the same motel.

It’s the first thought Tory has when he passes through the parking lot, the wind driving the rain hard against his face, and sees the Impala is parked three stalls down from the T-bird. He can just imagine how thrilled Dean was about _that_.

Luke’s sitting cross-legged on one of the beds when Tory pushes the door open. He’s in a t-shirt and boxers, with his laptop open in front of him and a faintly manic look in his eyes. He glances up when Tory shuts the door behind him, and then goes right back to his laptop.

“What’re you looking at?” Tory asks, shrugging off his dripping denim jacket – the shearling lining at least kept him mostly dry, though the motel room’s now going to smell strongly of sheep - and draping it over the back of the chair pushed in to the desk. He gives his head a shake, and then tries to wring some of the water out of his braid. Wearing his hair long had seemed like such a good idea at the time he’d decided to grow it out, but right now, he’d rather shave it all off than have to wait for it to dry.

“Birth and death records for Minnesota,” Luke says, without looking up. His attempt at a ponytail has died its long-awaited and unmourned death, and his damp curls are hanging loose around his face. As Tory watches, he brushes a lock back behind one ear and looks up, with a bright and extremely concerning grin. “Did you know that legally, neither of us exist?”

The snap of lightning that throws Luke’s face into sharp relief feels almost uncannily well-timed.

“What?” Tory asks, but he isn’t surprised. Not really. This feels like the other shoe he’s been waiting to hear drop ever since Luke opened the box of photos.

“No birth certificates. No hospital birth records. No Winchester – or Campbell, for that matter - brothers born _anywhere_ in Minnesota in the seventies or eighties, as far as I can tell,” Luke says. He might say something else, but whatever it is, it’s swallowed in a growling, rolling peal of thunder.

“Who’s that?” Tory asks, pointing at the record Luke’s got up on the screen. Luke barely spares it a glance.

“That’s the closest I got. Right address, wrong year. Too young to be either of us. A baby boy born to a Kate Milligan, name of Adam.” He slams the lid of his laptop closed. “And no death certificates issued for a Mary Winchester. No property taxes filed in the name of John or Mary Winchester. No car registration for a ’62 Thunderbird…”

“According to the records, we were never there,” Tory says.

He thinks, briefly, of Sam’s sincere, concerned expression, and wonders if the other Winchester brothers are doing the same searches, coming up with the same results.

“What do you think it means?” he asks, and Luke laughs. It’s not a nice laugh. Tory would be very happy to never hear it again.

“Have you ever considered how much damage we take on the average hunt?”

“Well, it’s hardly ever enough that we need a hospital, so -”

“No, it isn’t, is it,” Luke says, and then goes silent. The curtains light up from behind with another bolt of brilliant lightning, and Tory only counts five before the thunder boils in to fill the silence.

“It’s a lot, so you know,” Luke says, almost casually. “How many times have one or both of us dislocated a shoulder?”

“Seven,” Tory says, absently. The storm’s close. Too close. He hopes there won’t be broken windows.

Luke nods, like this is only proving his point. “Broken ribs, broken noses, that time a zombie broke my hand, the time I got _impaled_ -”

“We went to the hospital for that! The doctor said you were lucky it missed your heart.”

“Was I?” Luke asks. “Because I also seem to remember that doctor saying it was an uncommonly quick recovery.”

“You needed twenty-six stitches and you were stiff for a month.”

Luke waves that off, clearly giving up on that train of thought. “And there was that business with the Rawhead and the taser -”

“All right, so I got a shock,” Tory says, ducking into the bathroom and grabbing a hand towel to wrap his hair in. He’s going to have to leave it loose tonight if he wants it to dry, and it’s going to be one giant knot in the morning. Shouldn’t this bathroom have a hair dryer? “But there’s a reason they use tasers as non-lethal weapons.”

Luke skewers Tory with a stare like diamond. “We modified that taser to deliver lethal voltage so we could use it to kill monsters. You walked away with Lichtenberg figure scarring. That faded. In a week.”

The soft strobe bloom of lightning outside, filtered through the curtains, momentarily makes Luke’s familiar face strange.

“Well, I don’t know what you’re implying,” Tory says, at last, leaning back into the bathroom to drop the soggy towel beside the sink, at the last moment avoiding dropping it onto the pile of Luke’s jewelry. The last thing they need is to blow up the motel room with a mistakenly-activated hex. “We’re nothing more than human, just like everybody else.”

Tory’s gotten very good at recognising Luke’s tells – Luke can still fool him, but less often than he can everyone else. Still, even to Tory, the expression on Luke’s face as he turns towards the window is unreadable. “Yes. I’m sure you’re right. Because anything else would be unthinkable.”

“Exactly! You’re only tired out from all the driving and upset about what happened today. I am too. But maybe things will look less confusing in the morning.” For a moment, Tory almost mentions the dreams, the questions his conversation with the other Winchesters raised, that he’s just as frightened as Luke must be by what’s going on around and within them. He knows – he _knows_ – just how deeply and viscerally afraid Luke is that his visions mean he’s becoming the kind of monster they have to put down. That same fear is sitting cold and heavy and uneasy in Tory’s own gut, rolling nauseatingly with the thunder outside.

This isn’t really about birth records, about how much damage they can take and still walk away. This is about whether Tory still trusts Luke. About whether Luke still trusts himself.

But then Tory looks up, into the teeth of the haughty, furious, contemptuous glare Luke’s fixed on him, and the words all wither and die on his tongue. That almost manic light is back in Luke’s eyes, the darting, blind panic of a wild animal crowded into a corner, and Tory knows that right now, if Luke spots a vulnerability, he’s likely to bite.

Luke doesn’t need to know, right now, that his brother shares his fears. Right now, he needs Tory to be as solid and certain as he’s always been, as solid and certain as the little piece of metal that hangs around his neck. Luke needs his brother to be his anchor.

Tory just wishes, briefly, but with a pang, that he had someone to be that anchor for _him_.

Luke is still staring at him, his expression and tone both challenging as he demands, “Do you remember the year I was gone?”

“Yes? Of course, it was only -”

“Really?” An edge of hysteria works its way into Luke’s voice. “Because _I don’t_.”

Tory isn’t sure what to say to that, how to respond. He isn’t sure what it is that it’s making him feel, either, but he knows he doesn’t like it.

“What?” he says, at last, stupidly.

“I don’t remember anything about that year,” Luke says, his eyes wide and almost panicked over a brittle, ugly sideways grin. “I’ve been trying and _trying -_ ”

“Not even where you went?”

“Not even that!” Luke looks surprised by his own outburst, and dials the volume back. “It’s just – gone. Just dark. It’s as though I fell right off the face of the earth.”

Tory sits, heavily, on the bed beside Luke’s. He pushes up the sleeves of his navy blue Henley to his elbows, then, after a very short moment of consideration, rolls them back down again. The air conditioning unit under the window’s still blasting Arctic air into the room despite the grumbling storm outside, though Luke doesn’t seem to have noticed.

“And that’s not all,” Luke continues, waving a hand like he’s gesturing to a long list of grievances. “There are – gaps. Things I should remember, I don’t. Things I shouldn’t -”

He stops, abruptly, but Tory can finish the sentence himself all too easily. He wonders, vaguely, what kind of things Luke remembers that he shouldn’t. He wonders if they have anything to do with the gleam of light on a golden tower, or a tree with a serpent gnawing at its roots.

“It could be a curse,” he says, at last. “Do you remember what we were tracking before you left? A powerful witch -”

“Could have erased our entire lives from existence and put two – two _others_ in our places, so that the world believes they were there all along?” Luke interrupts, sharply. “Could have filled my memory – and yours, I suspect, though you’d actually have to _think_ to find out – with fog and shadows? Could have shifted the world on its axis so that we never really existed at all?”

Tory shrugs one shoulder.

“Maybe not. But – we know someone who could have,” he says, slowly, as the pieces of the thought fall into place in the back of his mind. “This could all be false – how sure are we that the Trickster was really dead?”

Luke opens his mouth, clearly about to say something scathing and dismissive, but stops. That strange manic light in his eyes settles a little as he says, thoughtfully, “You think it was a simulacrum you killed. A clone. And now this is vengeance?”

Tory shrugs. “It’s a place to start.” He holds up a hand as Luke pushes the lid of his laptop open again. “ _Tomorrow_. It’s already late enough as it is, even if we hadn’t just driven halfway across the country for the shock of a lifetime. We still don’t have anything solid to go on. _And_ it’s raining.”

“What about the house?” Luke asks, though he doesn’t actually sound that concerned.

“I think we can safely leave the ghost to the other Winchesters. We’ll focus on getting to the bottom of this. In the morning.”

Luke starts to protest, but Tory forces a smile as he adds, “Otherwise, I know you’re going to want coffee, and I don’t want to have to deal with you after you’ve had coffee.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Luke says, but he puts the laptop over onto the nightstand.

…

_Then_

In the end, the Trickster lay sprawled across the auditorium seats, with blood pooling around his still body and the wooden stake Luke had thrown to Tory driven through his chest.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Tory crowed, as Luke made his way down the stairs. “How’d you know he’d come up behind me?”

“How did _you_?” Luke fired back. “That was almost clever.”

“I hope you know that sounds like high praise coming from you,” Tory said, and Luke nodded.

“Don’t get too used to it. Your head’s big enough as it is.”

Tory laughed. “Well, let me inflate yours a little,” he said, looking over the corpse. “You did good work here. If it had been left up to me, we might never have known a Trickster was behind all this.”

The Winchesters didn’t do apologies. But Luke recognised an olive branch when he saw one extended. And he knew how to extend one back.

“I couldn’t have taken him on by myself,” he said. “I had good luck on this case. You did a lot of heavy lifting.”

Tory rolled his eyes, with a grin to show he didn’t mean it. “I always do the heavy lifting. You always avoid anything that might make those arms of yours less noodly.”

“I take it back,” Luke said. “This was all me. I solved it all on my own with no help from anybody.”

Tory snorted, nudging the body with one foot. “I wonder who he thought you were?” he said, glancing up from the ex-Trickster’s face to his brother. Luke wondered if he was imagining that Tory’s casual tone sounded just a little forced.

“How should I know? He thought he recognised me. He was wrong.”

Tory shrugged. “You’re the one who talked to him. Did you find out who he was?”

“He said he was Loki.” Luke thought back to the conversation at the IT desk. “Sort of.”

“ ‘Sort of’? How can you be ‘sort of’ a pagan god?”

“Not sort of a pagan god, sort of _Loki_. It sounded like he might be an imposter.”

Tory chewed on this for a moment, looking over the corpse. “He doesn’t look like a Loki.”

Luke tilted his head to consider the impaled form of the Trickster. “You’re right, he doesn’t.” He waved a hand towards the corpse. “When I think of – one of the greatest gods of a civilisation that was the terror of Europe and at one point spread its reach across the world, a god who defied his own celestial hierarchy and became a law unto himself, a god whose name has endured for a millennium and more…well, I don’t think of…this.”

Tory gave his scruff of beard a thoughtful stroke. “Yes, he’s a little short.”

Luke stared at him.

“And he’s got a big chin,” Tory said, like he was passing a final verdict. “Wait, you think of all _that_ when you hear the name Loki?”

“Yes?” Luke said. “When I think Loki, I think more…” He waved a hand irritably through the air. “Power. Cunning. Brilliance. Blue, for some reason. Not a weaselly little man in a janitor’s uniform.”

Tory considered the corpse a little longer. “I think ginger,” he said, at last, decisively.

“Ginger?”

“That’s how Loki’s usually shown, isn’t it? As a redhead?”

“How would you know?” Luke asked. “As though you ever crack a book.”

Tory looked down, at the corpse, at the frozen expression of surprise on the Trickster’s face.

“More Norse gods,” he said, thoughtfully, to himself. And then, “Wasn’t Loki the one who gave birth to a horse?”

…

_Now_

The rain hammers relentlessly against the windows and the roof, as if the storm is probing for weak points, trying to find or force its way inside. Every so often, a flash of lightning floods the room with electric white, shadows standing out sharp against the brilliance until the whole room falls into darkness again with a tooth-rattling _boom_ of thunder. It sounds, Tory thinks, like the storm is right on top of them, and has no intention of moving away.

That’s why he can’t sleep, he reassures himself. No one would be able to sleep in a storm like this.

Tory readjusts his pillow, kicks the covers down towards the end of the bed, stares up at the flat white of the ceiling. There’s a water mark in one corner, by the door, a brown stain spreading slowly out like some kind of fungus. He wonders if that’s from the pipes, or from storms like this one. He wonders if there’s a tornado brewing out there somewhere, maybe close by. He wonders if the other Winchesters are getting any sleep.

Almost automatically, Tory’s fingers close over the pendant hanging around his neck, the cool metal shape – something like a stylized anchor with a flattened, inverted triangle in the place of the U-shape along its bottom - fitting perfectly into the hollow of his palm. He absently traces the outline of it, the engraving across its surface, stroking his thumb over the unusual shape in time to Luke’s steady breathing from the other side of the room.

The pendant had been a gift from Luke, years ago, when they were both only boys. A gift intended for a father who hadn’t bothered to come home for Christmas. A gift – not a thanks, but a token, maybe - for someone who had been constant, loyal, when the one who was supposed to be hadn’t.

But – and now, with Luke’s and Dean’s and Sam’s words echoing in his ears as loud as the thunder outside, Tory wonders about that memory. Because hadn’t the pendant been – somehow, also – a gift from his father?

This isn’t going to help him sleep, Tory scolds himself, silently. He’ll need to be sharp tomorrow, need to be awake and alert and all the things he isn’t when he’s been up all night. He settles back against the pillow and shuts his eyes, pendant still clutched in one hand, and concentrates hard on the quiet sound of Luke’s inhale, exhale, the steady thud of his own heart, the counterpoint drumming of the rain.

If the thunder dies back to a grumble in the distance, if the rain slackens until it’s nothing but a soft susurrus against the pavement outside, Tory isn’t awake long enough to notice.

…

_Against a sky dark as a curse, a tower like a golden spire. Light, then shadow, sweeps slow and relentless across the tableau as lightning strikes the tower and it starts to crumble._

_A second raven flutters down to join the first on its perch in the tree with the serpent gnawing at its roots._

_Luke, in his worn jeans and threadbare green flannel, crowned with golden horns._

_He raises his head, slowly, green eyes glinting, and Tory can see the jagged black stitches binding his mouth shut._

…

Tory jerks awake, gasping for air. He claws desperately at his chest before realising he can breathe, that nothing is restricting his lungs.

He raises a hand to his mouth, trying to swallow down the silent horror the visions have raised in him. They’re not true, he knows. Or, at least, not literal. No one’s sewing his brother’s mouth shut.

But he’s seen just enough of the cryptic images his dreams throw up come metaphorically true before him to know that it means something. Perhaps no one is going to try to physically stitch Luke’s lips together. But maybe someone is going to try to shut his smart mouth. Permanently.

And in this business, that usually means one thing.

“Luke,” he says, turning to the other bed, and instantly knows something is wrong. The room is too quiet, the little lump of blankets on the other bed too still. Outside, the rain has stopped, the morning light pale and grey through the blanket of clouds overhead. Somewhere in the distance, the storm gives one final wary murmur.

Tory’s up and across the room in one movement, pulling aside the crumpled heap of bedding on the bed Luke had claimed as his. It reveals nothing more than sheets, stretched out over the mattress.

“Luke?” Tory calls again, but there’s no answer. Not that he was expecting one. The bathroom door is open, the room beyond dark. The motel room, empty and silent in the grey light, suddenly feels infinitely colder.

Luke is gone.

…

_Earlier_

The house has a huge FOR SALE sign on the lawn, faded by the sun. It looks like it’s been empty for a while. Not that it would matter if it were still being shown. Luke plans to be gone, one way or another, before sunrise.

The circle is surprisingly easy to complete, runic script inscribed around its edges. There’s no chance of finding mistletoe after midnight in Kansas, so Luke passes over the part of the summoning that calls for ingredients and skips straight to the incantation. It’s all clipped consonants and lilting vowels, and Luke has to start over twice, stumbling over terminal Rs. Still, there’s something about it that sounds comfortingly familiar, like the Minnesotan accents he faintly remembers from childhood, and it isn’t long before he falls into the rhythm of the words. He fancies that the last few syllables sting, like little sparks, as they snap off his tongue, though it’s probably just his imagination.

Nothing happens.

The candles burn steadily, untroubled by a breath of eldritch wind. There’s no sudden drop in temperature. Nothing turns into anything else or leaps out to try to bite Luke’s face off. The circle stays empty.

Luke isn’t surprised. After all, he did skip part of the spell. And a Trickster wouldn’t be a Trickster if he always came when he was called.

Still, he can’t help a small, self-satisfied smile when a voice behind him says, “Okay, I gotta ask. Did you actually expect this to work?”

Luke doesn’t turn around, just stands facing the circle, clasping his hands loosely behind his back. When he thinks his voice will come out steady, he says, into the flickering candlelight filling the empty living room, “I thought it might get your attention.”

“Well, if it’s my attention you want, you got it,” the creature that had sort-of introduced itself as Loki says, sauntering around to stand beside Luke, surveying the circle critically. “Now, _those_ are some runes. You would not believe how many people mess up the runes. I mean, they’re a series of straight lines. What’s so hard about that?”

“Unfamiliar things often pose unexpected difficulties,” Luke says. Like, for example, bartering with something instead of trying to trap and destroy it. He isn’t sure where to start. “I see we didn’t kill you.”

The Trickster seems far too nonchalant about that when he answers. “Not for lack of trying.”

“You created a copy of yourself. A solid illusion that could act independently, that we could put a stake through. To convince us you were dead, so we’d leave you alone? Or so you could get the drop on us later?”

The Trickster shrugs, with both hands held palm-up, bobbing his head back and forth as if to suggest that the answer could be either.

Luke takes a breath in, lets it out, slow, silent, steady. He stares directly into the flame of the nearest candle to keep from having to see that too-knowing gaze, that too-smug smile. “Is this your doing? Are you the one who -” For once, words fail him. He’s not sure how to describe whatever seems to have happened to him – and Tory, though Tory seems determined to pretend that nothing’s wrong, as though the pretending will make it true. At least when Luke lies, he knows he’s lying. “Erased us?”

“No,” the Trickster repeats. “Honestly, your hunter shtick was never anything more than a minor annoyance, and once I found out what was really going on, it wasn’t worth the trouble of messing with.” He pauses, with what Luke thinks is unnecessary drama. “But I do know who did it. And how.”

“I’m sure you do,” Luke says, not bothering to hide his sarcasm. “And all you want in exchange for that knowledge is for me to let you go unharmed, is that it?”

The Trickster raises a hand, swirls a lollipop out of thin air and sticks it into this mouth. “Hm, nope. I could walk outta here right now if I wanted.”

Luke looks over at the Trickster, holding his gaze until he knows any other person would be starting to squirm a little. Then he smiles. “How sure are you of that?”

“Not bad, not bad as bluffs go,” the Trickster says, like he’s complimenting a performance or a piece of artwork. “But you usually have to make sure the person you’re trying to intimidate doesn’t know your limits better than you do.”

“Oh? Then what _are_ my limits?”

The Trickster just smiles and flicks imaginary dust from the front of his jacket. “You may also have noticed I’m not actually standing in your circle. And I hope you learned from our last little dust-up that you’ve got no chance of getting to me unless I let you.”

Luke doesn’t say anything in response. The rest might be true, but he knows the last sentence isn’t. There’s always a way to get to anything that thinks.

Still, he’s already decided that this is one game of wits that would take more time and preparation to win than he has at his disposal. Right now, Luke just needs answers. “Fine. Then what _do_ you want?”

“Oh, I’ve got everything _I_ want,” the Trickster says, waving the lollipop like it’s a prime example, which, Luke thinks, it might actually be. “You’re the one who’s turning his back on a lifetime of warnings from Daddy so you can summon up and have a nice chat with an eldritch horror. I think the question, Lukas Winchester, is what _you_ want.”

Luke can’t say he’s actually surprised that the Trickster knows his name. He also can’t say that that ‘lifetime of warnings’ feels very real right now. He turns his attention back to the candle flame.

“The truth,” he says, at last.

The Trickster whistles under his breath. “Wow, did you ever pick the wrong guy to summon up for _that_ one.”

“No,” Luke says, firmly, meeting the Trickster’s eyes. “I don’t think I did.”

Despite the flip attitude and smugly dismissive expressions, there’s something coldly serious, something vast and thoughtful and intelligent, in the Trickster’s gaze. Luke feels like his measure is being taken, his entire being evaluated with uncomfortable precision, just from a single glance. He wonders, briefly, what the Trickster sees looking back at him.

Then the Trickster grins, those ancient eyes crinkling up around the corners like it’s a joke, like there’s still something he knows that Luke doesn’t. The fact that that’s almost certainly the case doesn’t make it any less annoying. “Yep. If the truth’s really what you want, I could give you back your memories.” He grins wider, showing just a few too many teeth. “Your _real_ memories.”

“My -”

“Just your memories, though. Everything else, you’re gonna have to figure out for yourself.”

Luke bites down on his lower lip so hard and abruptly that he tastes blood. That’s _exactly_ what he wants. Of course, it has to be some kind of a trick. He absolutely cannot show how much he wants it.

On the other hand, though…Luke already has front-row seats for the slow disintegration of his own mind. If the Trickster wanted to convince Luke that he was – well, _something_ , he wouldn’t have to bother with tricking Luke into anything. All he’d have to do is wait. Also, based on the punishments they’d seen him deliver, drawing things out this long, keeping his victims in suspense, doesn’t seem like his style anyway.

And Luke knows, perhaps better than anyone, that there’s no point in a lie when the truth will get you what you want.

“ _Is_ that what you really want?” the Trickster says, and the knowing note in his voice is almost enough to make Luke throw caution to the wind, say yes, do it, _now_. “Because I gotta say, I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”

“Why,” Luke forces out, trying to keep his voice level, his expression disinterested. “Why bother helping someone who tried to kill you? What would you ask for in exchange?”

The Trickster does that shrug again, popping the lollipop into the side of his mouth and sucking on it thoughtfully. “Honestly? Nothing. I’d consider it a favour repaid, say it makes us even. But I’d probably do it for free even if I hadn’t borrowed anything of yours. It’ll really get up the noses of some people I don’t like. _And,_ watching the fallout’ll be hilarious.”

Which means the cost is hidden. That something about just getting the answers Luke wants so badly will cost him dearly.

Or that he won’t get what he’s looking for at all.

“I’d have to be a fool to believe one of your promises,” Luke says, at last, crossing his arms over his chest.

The Trickster shoots him a wink. “Well, if the shoe fits…”

For a moment, Luke considers backing out, walking away. Going back to the motel room and pretending nothing ever happened. Getting Tory and going back on the road, finding another hunt, leaving Lawrence and the other Winchesters and everything behind them. Papering over the gaps in his memory, like he’s been doing since he first started to feel them yawn, and spending the rest of his life trying not to look too closely at them, hoping they don’t keep spreading. Does it really matter who he was and where he came from, if he still is who he is?

But Luke already has the answer to _that_ question. It does. It does matter. Secrets, he knows all too well, have sharp teeth, and they can bite when least expected. He needs to know the truth.

And Luke’s willing to do something reckless to find it out.

“Fine,” he says, at last. “Then call me a fool.”

The Trickster smiles.

“Hold still, this might tickle a bit,” he says, reaching out a hand with index and middle fingers extended towards Luke’s forehead.

The last thing Luke Winchester hears is, “And before you get mad, remember you _did_ say you didn’t care if I used the name.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [GretchenSinister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister) suggested the Thunderbird as an Odinson alternative to the Impala, and I had to use it because the name was perfect. However, the ’67 T-birds look ridiculous. The ’62 models are marginally better, but I’ve used that particular year, not because of anything to do with the car itself, but because that’s the year the first Mighty Thor comic was published.


	2. Chapter 2

_Now_

Luke hasn’t just stepped out for some fresh air. He also hasn’t gone to pick up breakfast, since the T-bird’s still parked in the motel lot when Tory heads out, and Luke hasn’t been seen at any of the diners or coffee shops Tory stops at. More than one waitress suggests, a little too enthusiastically, that he should leave his phone number with them in case Luke does come in. Tory politely declines.

Luke also isn’t at the house he and Tory had visited yesterday, but the ’67 Impala is parked outside. As Tory pulls up behind it, Sam and Dean and an older, Black woman Tory doesn’t recognise are making their way out the front door, which looks impressively battered. Tory recognises the signs of a door that’s been kicked in – he’s kicked a few in himself. He wonders what happened here last night. Based on the smile on Jenny’s face as she waves the other Winchesters out the door, he’d say the ghost probably got sent on to wherever it is that good ghosts go.

Tory waits, half-sitting and half-leaning against the T-bird’s hood with his arms crossed, until Dean scowls in his direction. Jenny notices Tory, too, and gives an apologetic wave. Tory wonders what she saw, what Sam and Dean told her. It can’t have been what they really think of him, or she’d be slamming that damaged door as hard as she could in his face.

“You again,” Dean says, marching straight up to Tory. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing back here?”

“Me again,” Tory agrees, ignoring the second part. “What did the spirit turn out to be?”

“Poltergeist,” Sam says, briefly. Tory winces. He and Luke hadn’t had long enough in the house to figure that out, but it should have been obvious by the strength and level of activity inside. Sam looks – and sounds – slightly shell-shocked.

“You know what took it out in the end?” Dean demands, jabbing a finger in Tory’s direction. “Our _mom_. Purifying the place didn’t work worth a damn. Our own mother’s restless spirit _burned herself up_ to save Sam from that thing. _Our_ mom! Not yours!”

“Dean,” Sam sighs. He sounds tired. Like he doesn’t have enough energy to care about any of this.

Tory finds he can relate.

“Your mother,” he concedes. “I’m sorry. She was an incredible woman. To see her sacrifice herself like that -”

“Missouri,” Sam interrupts, raising his voice as he turns towards the older woman with him and Dean, “this is Tory. One of the other hunters we mentioned. Tory, Missouri Mosely. She’s a psychic.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Tory says, glancing over at Sam as he holds out a hand for the woman to shake. Of course, the wound is still so fresh, it might be too soon to talk about it.

“Pleasure’s all mine,” the woman – Missouri – says, clasping Tory’s hand in both of her own.

Dean looks Tory over, something just a little too thoughtful settling into his scowl. “Where’s that brother of yours?”

Tory suddenly doesn’t want to admit it. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I thought he might’ve come back.”

“Brother?” Missouri asks, her eyes sharp.

“Luke. He’s younger than me.” Tory takes a breath, puffs it out. “And very stubborn. We…argued, last night. About all of this. Whether we can trust what we remember.”

Sam nods, also looking thoughtful. “What’d you come up with? We were a little preoccupied with the poltergeist.”

Tory shakes his head. “We tangled with a Trickster a few jobs back. He claimed to be Loki -”

“As in, Norse god Loki? Granddaddy of all pranksters, Loki?” Dean interrupts, apparently making up his mind about whether Tory’s a secret evil mastermind or just an idiot. “And you didn’t think maybe you should mention that?”

Missouri purses her lips and raises both hands, palms out, taking a step back. “Sorry, boys. That’s my cue to head on out. Spirits, I can handle, but I draw the line at gods.”

“Yeah, can’t say I blame you,” Dean says, with a toss of his head, rounding on Tory again. “You’re a hunter with memory issues, you’re running into other hunters who’re thinking maybe you gotta be put down because of it, and it didn’t cross your mind that it might be relevant that you brushed up against a pagan god with a sweet tooth for ironic punishment?”

“Well, we thought we’d killed him,” Tory says, trying not to sound defensive. “And that he was lying.”

“Lying…about being the Liesmith,” Sam says, deadpan.

Tory shifts, uncomfortably. “Yes.”

Dean raises both eyebrows and then squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head with a little exasperated sigh, like he can’t believe how stupid this is.

“All right,” he says. “We find this guy, we gank him, you stop thinking you’re our brother from another mother – the same mother, whatever – problem solved?”

Sam doesn’t say anything. But he doesn’t say it in a firm, almost pointed kind of way, like there’s something he could say that he deliberately isn’t. It doesn’t escape Tory’s notice that Sam’s gaze lingers on the pendant around Tory’s neck, and he reaches up reflexively to wrap a hand around it. Sam looks away, glancing over at Dean briefly. “But first you want to find your brother.”

Tory nods. He doesn’t tell Sam and Dean that he has a sinking feeling that Luke doesn’t want to be found, especially not since he’s equally sure now that finding Luke will mean finding Loki and vice versa. Luke’s independent streak and his endless hunger for knowledge are some of his best and most frustrating qualities, but the two combined with his pride have led him to make…bad decisions in the past. The not-so-distant past. Tory wouldn’t be surprised if his brother decided to confront the Trickster alone.

But if he says that to Sam and Dean…they already don’t trust Tory or Luke. They might not understand, or might jump to the wrong conclusions.

“I checked the diners in walking distance,” Tory says, instead. “No sign of him. I’m worried that the Trickster may be in the city, that it may have lured us here to put us in your path like Dean suggested, in hopes that we’d mistrust each other and finish each other off. Since that obviously hasn’t worked…I don’t want to think about what it might do to Luke now.”

“Give us some time to regroup,” Sam says, with a pointed look over at Dean, who shuts his mouth sullenly. Tory has to admit he’s with Sam on this, though. He and Dean both look, if it’s possible, even more exhausted than Tory feels. “It’s been…a long night.”

Tory nods. “I’ll keep looking. If I find either of them -” He pauses. “Is there some way I could get in touch with you?”

He waits as Sam scribbles down a phone number on the back of a receipt from a diner in Colorado, and watches as the other Winchesters pile into the Impala. Then Tory open the T-bird’s driver’s-side door and swings himself in. He sits, for a moment, shaking out his arms, taking and letting out a long breath, trying not to let any of the nameless fears crouching in the dark places of his brain lunge out at him. Then he turns the key in the ignition and turns to look over his shoulder, to back up and pull out.

Which is when Luke swings the door open and drops into the passenger seat.

Tory swears, banging his leg on the underside of the dash as he yanks his foot back off the clutch. The T-bird sputters and stalls, and he turns the engine off, the better to glare at his brother. Luke just stares straight out the windshield like there’s something fascinating out there. Tory tries to follow his gaze, but all he sees is a quiet residential street.

“God _damn_ it!” he yells, dropping both hands against the steering wheel. He takes a deep breath in, and lets it out slowly. “You scared the hell out of me. Where’d you come from?”

Luke turns his head, almost imperceptibly, fixing his gaze on Tory’s face. His expression is flat, unreadable. There’s something about it, something about the way he moved and the way he’s now still, that’s – Tory doesn’t like it. He also doesn’t like the pinched look that’s settled around Luke’s eyes.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asks, and Luke blinks at him. “You look – not quite yourself.”

For a fraction of a second, Luke doesn’t react. Then his eyes flick down towards his knees, a smile breaking across his face.

“Oh, I’m feeling _quite_ myself, thank you,” he says, giving his head a little shake before looking back up at Tory. Thankfully, his smile recedes a little as he settles back against the passenger seat. Tory can’t quite explain why he feels a burst of relief. There was something about that smile that was _sharp_ , somehow.

“Where’ve you been?” he asks, warily, and Luke gives him a proper, actual glance, moving like a human being again. “I’ve been looking everywhere.”

“Out.” Luke says, unhelpfully. “I’ve got information I need to share. Can we go back to the motel?”

Tory considers this for just long enough for something in his hindbrain to whisper _no_. “You haven’t had anything to eat, have you?” he asks, instead.

Luke rolls his eyes.

“Or sleep,” Tory says. He twists the key in the ignition again. “Right. We’re going to get food, and coffee. You can tell me whatever it is that’s so important while we eat.” And he can slip a little holy water into the coffee and spill the salt in his brother’s lap. In a public place. Which might be a double-edged sword, depending on how the salt and the holy water turn out, and how much whatever might be wearing his brother cares about hurting innocent people.

Luke gives him a look that says in no uncertain terms that he knows exactly what Tory’s thinking, but he doesn’t protest.

…

The nearest diner is a little less than a ten-minute drive away. Tory tries not to white-knuckle it the whole way there.

Luke doesn’t react to the holy water, or the salt, or the genuine silver-plated fork Tory offers when he drops his, in a suspiciously convenient accident, to the floor. Still, Tory can’t relax.

It doesn’t stop him shoveling pancakes into his mouth, though. Food is food.

Luke barely touches his eggs, playing with the scramble on his plate with the fork Tory gave him. Finally, he says, “I’ve been thinking. About Lenore.”

_Lenore_. The vampire whose coven had switched over to animal blood. The one they’d helped escape from another hunter. Tory nods in understanding. He has a sinking feeling, even though Luke’s passed all the tests he can think of, that he knows where this is going.

Luke actually scoops up a bite of scrambled eggs, but then he stares at it distantly instead of eating it. “Do you think Father would approve?”

Tory chews on that as he chews on his pancake. His immediate thought is that their father would have been back to back with Gordon Walker, slaying Lenore’s vampires, but something tells him this is not the right answer. “I think we did the right thing. That’s all Father ever asked of us.”

Luke skewers him with a look. “So you do believe that monsters can go against their own worse natures?”

“It’s all so much more complicated than it seemed when we were younger,” Tory admits. “But…I believe everyone deserves the chance to prove themselves.” He sets down his knife and fork. This feels like a conversation that requires his full attention. “Unfortunately, most of those we meet have already had their chance.”

Luke doesn’t say anything, just finally puts that bite of scrambled eggs into his mouth.

“So, then,” he says, after he’s made a whole production of chewing and swallowing and washing that bite down with a sip of coffee that must be cold by now, “if you woke tomorrow to find yourself with fangs, would you seek out Lenore’s brood? Or keep hunting? Glut yourself on the blood of werewolves and witches? Attempt to prove yourself not one of the monsters you are by blood, but still the man you were raised to be?”

_Brood_. _Glut._ They’re unusual word choices. Actually, it’s all unusual. “Well, no,” Tory admits. “I’d expect you to take off my head.”

“You wouldn’t deserve the chance to prove yourself?” Luke says softly, his focus entirely on his eggs.

“Deserve? Maybe. Want? No. You’ve seen new vampires. They don’t know anything but thirst. Most of _them_ aren’t lucky enough to have such a skilled hunter at their side.” He takes a sip of his own coffee to cover the furious mental gymnastics he’s doing. The twisting of his words, now, that’s _very_ Luke. “And innocent people pay for it. With their lives.”

“So what you are saying,” Luke says, his gaze fixed on the bare patch of Formica tabletop between his and Tory’s plates like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen, his voice silken and dangerous. He’s gone unnaturally still again, like he was back in the car, and Tory catches himself leaning back in the booth, away from his own brother. “Is that you do _not_ believe that monsters can go against their own worse natures.”

“I said no such thing!” Tory protests, and Luke’s eyes flick up to fix him with a glare so venomous it makes Tory’s breath catch.

“Yes,” he says. “You did.”

“I’m not going to argue this with you,” Tory says, frowning, and reaches for his fork. “Especially since, when you’re not turning my words back on me, I believe we’re arguing for the same thing.”

Luke’s stare doesn’t waver, but it does lose a little of its potency in the face of Tory cutting off another hunk of pancake and stuffing it in his mouth. He settles back in the booth, arms crossed over his chest, still glaring. Tory does his best to ignore him.

“Was there something you wanted to tell me?” he asks, instead. “Some information you said you had to share?”

For a moment, he thinks Luke is going to refuse to answer, that he’s going to give Tory the silent treatment. But then Luke gives a wary glance around the diner and says, shortly, “Not here.”

Tory considers for a moment.

“All right,” he says, nodding at Luke’s all-but-untouched plate. “But eat some of your eggs first. They’ll be no good cold.”

Luke gives Tory another of those inscrutable looks, but he does, apparently grudgingly, pick his fork back up.

…

“So?” Tory asks, as he slams the T-bird’s door behind him.

Thankfully, Luke doesn’t waste any more time beating around the bush. “John Winchester’s been in town since we arrived.”

Tory freezes with his hand on the ignition. “Father’s here?”

“I’d hesitate to call him ‘Father’,” Luke says. “But yes.”

“And he hasn’t contacted us,” Tory says, feeling hollow. More than the photographs, more than meeting Sam and Dean, more even than the uncertainty underlying his own memories – this, more than anything, drives it home. The touchstone of his life has been removed, and suddenly, he finds himself adrift.

Luke’s voice has lost the strange intensity it carried in the diner. Tory looks over, sees nothing but understanding and a deep, veiled sorrow in his brother’s gaze. “If any part of our memories is true, it was often his habit to take off without any contact with us -”

“When we were _children_ ,” Tory says, cutting him off. “And he judged it too dangerous for us.”

Luke doesn’t seem to have an answer for that. He thoughtfully turns away, looking out the window as Tory yanks the key in the ignition, fiddling with the stereo.

“ _Someone_ sent us to Burkitsville,” Tory says, at last, when he trusts his voice again. “Sent Sam and Dean, too. If it wasn’t him…”

“Perhaps that’s where it all started,” Luke says, quietly. “After all, that was the first time we tangled with a god.”

He looks over, meeting Tory’s eyes.

“Do you know where Fa- _John_ is now?” Tory asks.

Luke shakes his head apologetically. “I don’t even know if he’s still in town. I was asking around, to see if anyone else here remembered the Winchesters. Many did. And the mechanic I spoke to said he’d seen John in the coffeeshop the day before, though John got up and left before he could say hello.”

Tory drums his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Right,” he says. “Are there any other motels in town?”

Luke’s eyebrows furrow, and Tory can see the moment understanding dawns. He shakes his head even as Tory shifts the T-bird into gear. “Oh, you’re _not_ going to try to find him. What do you hope to accomplish?” His voice goes low, cracking slightly as he says, “Do you _want_ to look him in the face and hear him say he doesn’t know you? That you are not his son?”

“If it’s the truth,” Tory says, checking over his shoulder as he pulls out into the road, “yes.”

He glances over at Luke, when Luke doesn’t respond. Luke’s watching him, with that same strange intensity, his expression inscrutable.

But when Tory meets his eyes, he smiles ruefully, and abruptly seems like himself again.

…

The other motel in town has a huge painted wooden sign shaped like a cowboy hat and fake-wood panelling halfway up the office walls. The big black truck isn’t visible anywhere in the parking lot, but that doesn’t necessarily mean their fa- _John_ isn’t staying there.

Luke stops just as they pass through the office door, rummaging in the pocket of his jacket and pulling out his phone. With an apologetic grimace in Tory’s direction, he flips it open, and turns, heading back out into the parking lot with it pressed to his ear.

Tory turns towards the desk, silently cursing his brother’s timing. Now he has to do the talking, which Luke _knows_ is not his strong suit. An uncharitable thought reminds Tory that Luke was against this in the first place. And that he isn’t sure he actually heard Luke’s phone buzz.

“Can I help you?” the clerk behind the desk says, and Tory turns his attention to him, giving the clerk his most winning smile.

“I hope you can. My brother and I got separated from our father, and he’s not picking up his phone. Do you know if he’s back in his room?”

The clerk raises both eyebrows. “Did you try knocking?”

Tory lets his grin go sheepish. “Neither of us can remember which room it was. And we don’t want to go knocking on every door.”

The clerk sighs, flipping open the book on the counter beside him. “Last name?”

“Wayne,” Tory says.

The clerk turns his attention to the book, flips over a couple of pages, flips back. Tory looks back over his shoulder through the window, sees Luke still talking animatedly into his phone. He’ll get no help from that quarter.

The clerk bangs the book shut, fixing Tory with a bright and extremely insincere grin. “Sorry. No guests with the last name Wayne. Are you sure you got the right motel?”

“No,” Tory says. “How about – is he registered under Eastwood?”

The clerk squints at him.

“You forgot your own father’s last name,” he says.

“Um,” Tory says. Here is where Luke would come up with something clever, reasonable-sounding, disarming, get the clerk laughing, talk him into opening that book back up. It’s never been Tory’s gift. “I think I’d better just – go.”

“Yeah, I think you better,” the clerk agrees, resting his hand on the phone behind the counter. Tory can feel his wary gaze drilling into his back the whole way across the motel office and out the door.

Luke looks back over his shoulder as the door bangs closed behind Tory, with a jangle of wind chimes. “Ash,” he growls into the speaker, or maybe “Hush”, and then snaps his phone shut.

“Any luck?” he asks Tory, who shakes his head.

“Who called?”

“You remember the shapeshifter in St. Louis?”

Tory frowns. “The one that got my name put on a government watchlist?”

“The same.” Luke waves his phone vaguely before tucking it into his pocket. “Becky got in touch. A friend of hers thinks she has a poltergeist. I gave her the number of another hunter who might be closer. And recommended a carbon monoxide detector.”

“That was wise,” Tory says.

He looks a moment longer at his brother. Luke seems almost like himself again, that strangeness that had put Tory on edge leached away. He even sounds more like himself – the suggestion of a carbon monoxide detector especially.

And yet, there’s still something pinched around Luke’s eyes.

“Well, he isn’t here,” Luke says. “Will you give up this foolish idea? He could be two states away by now -”

He has to hurry to keep up as Tory strides across the lot to the T-bird.

“He might know something that could help us get to the bottom of this,” Tory says, yanking the car door open.

“That’s assuming he’ll even speak to us. And won’t believe us to be some manner of thing that needs killing on sight.” Luke crosses his arms over his chest, making no move to get in the car. “All of which, of course, presupposes that we can _find_ the man.”

“We could contact the other Winchesters. See if they’ve heard from him.” Tory stuffs both hands into his jacket pockets, but the receipt Sam had written his number on doesn’t come to hand.

Luke watches as Tory checks the pockets of his jeans, his jacket again, pulls out his wallet and checks inside it. Sam’s phone number does not materialise.

“Maybe it fell out when you got your wallet out to pay for breakfast,” Luke suggests, after the third time Tory checks his jacket pockets.

“Dammit,” Tory mutters, stuffing his wallet back into his back pocket. “Doesn’t matter. They’d just finished with the poltergeist when I met them this morning. I’m sure we’ll find them at the motel.”

…

They don’t find the other Winchesters at the motel.

“Not one word,” Tory warns Luke. It doesn’t help. Luke can radiate deafening smugness without opening his mouth.

They try at the motel office, just in case. Luke does the talking this time. Apparently the other Winchesters haven’t checked out yet, and John was never there.

“They’ll be back,” Tory says, into the teeth of Luke’s stare. “We can wait.”

Luke starts to roll his eyes, but then stops.

“I know what we didn’t think of,” he says. “Do you remember the case with all the bugs?”

Tory shudders. “Don’t remind me.”

“Fine, but – we squatted in one of the empty houses.”

Tory pauses.

“That’s not a half-bad idea,” he says. “Are there any new housing developments in town?”

…

As it turns out, there are a few construction sites around Lawrence, but nothing like the cursed housing development Luke had mentioned. However, there _are_ a handful of real estate listings that look promising.

The first house is empty and looks like it’s been that way since it went onto the market in nineteen seventy-something. The second has clearly been squatted in, but not by hunters. By the third house, Tory’s starting to despair.

“One more,” Luke says. “That place with all the trees. If I were to choose a place to set up a base of operations where I could come and go without the neighbours taking notice, I’d choose there.”

“You couldn’t have mentioned this three houses ago?” Tory grumbles.

But he kicks the engine back into gear, follows Luke’s directions to the last empty house on the list. It is, as Luke had said, shielded from the street by a dark wall of pine trees and a tall, dark-stained fence. The trees are taller than the single-storey house’s roof. Tory can’t imagine the place gets much light.

They pull up across the street, and Tory kills the T-bird’s engine. The house, in the depths of its miniature, artificial forest, is little more than a lurking shadow.

In the window of which a curtain twitches.

Tory grabs for the door handle, but Luke’s hand closing on his other arm draws him up short. “Do you really think he’ll be thrilled to see two – _strangers_ – claiming to be hunters – or worse, his _sons_ – turn up on his doorstep, when he’s clearly taking pains not to be found?”

“More thrilled, I think, than if we were to break in and sneak up on him,” Tory says, already knowing his brother’s mind. Luke’s scowl says that his prediction has found the mark.

“Fine,” Luke says. “You take the front door. I’ll circle around the back and catch him when he quite wisely tries to sneak out to avoid you.”

Tory shakes his head, but he does have to admit Luke’s plan is sound.

He’s careful, as he shuts the T-bird’s door behind him, but it still gives out a solid _thump_ as it slams shut. Tory winces, and Luke shoots him a poisonous look.

The curtain in the window of the little house falls abruptly back into place.

Tory swears under his breath. Without any real idea what else to do, he jogs across the street and up the short sidewalk to the door.

Tory’s half-expecting the little house to be locked down tighter than a drum. He’s very surprised – and not a little suspicious – when he goes to knock and the door swings inwards at the first rap of his knuckles. He hesitates, for a long moment, then reaches into his jacket and draws out his pistol, holding it low as he steps through the door.

“Hello?” he calls, as he makes his way down the short hall. The silence is absolute, but also, somehow, _too_ absolute. Crowded. Like someone nearby is being very quiet.

There’s nobody in the kitchen. Tory pokes his head around the door into the living room and sees no one, but the crowded silence seems to get somehow deeper. He takes a step through the doorway.

And stops.

He doesn’t mean to. It isn’t a choice he makes. He just – stops moving forward. It’s not exactly like there’s an invisible wall there, not exactly like he’s reached the end of some tether, not exactly like his limbs lock up and stop obeying his mental commands. He just reaches a certain spot and can’t go any farther.

Tory looks down. The toe of his workboot is just butting up against a line of something silvery and powdery. He tries to nudge it away, but his boot stops before so much as a flake of the stuff shifts out of place.

It occurs to Tory that he’s just walked into a trap.

He tries to turn and walk back out into the hall, but doesn’t get more than three paces before, again, he can’t move.

“See, Sam?” Dean’s voice is just the wrong side of smug. “Told you anybody who talks like that is either a Fed or an immortal. Or maybe both.”

Tory can’t stop the bark of laughter that bursts out of him as he turns to face the living room and the other Winchesters as they emerge from hiding, though he doesn’t try very hard. “ _Immortal?_ ”

_We modified that taser to deliver lethal voltage so we could use it to kill monsters. You walked away…_

Tory shakes off the uncomfortable memory with a quick jerk of his head. “You’re joking.”

Neither Dean nor Sam crack a smile.

“Oh, nobody’s laughing, Sparky,” Dean says, hefting the shotgun he’s been holding low at his side. He jerks his chin in Tory’s direction. “Get rid of the gun.”

Tory looks from Dean over to Sam. In the past few days, he’s found more sympathy there, but also more suspicion. Right now, he only sees the suspicion.

He holds out his pistol so both the other – the Winchesters can see, and then tosses it outside of the ring of silvery stuff. Dean nods, like he’s satisfied, but he doesn’t lower the shotgun.

“What are you doing here?” Tory says, at last, when neither of the other two speak. He gestures broadly towards his feet and the circle he’s trapped in. “What is this?”

Dean tips his chin up, just a little, and shoots Tory a humourless smile. “Think we could ask you the same question.”

“We heard Fa- _John_ was in town,” Tory admits. There’s still a slim chance that these two men – John’s _real_ sons – are here to see him – “And thought he might have some idea what’s going on.”

“Oh, he has an idea of what’s going on, all right,” Dean says. “He called and sent us here. Told us what to look for.”

“We know who you are,” Sam says, his eyes narrowing as he turns a half-smile in Tory’s direction. “And _what_ you are.”

Tory looks from one to the other, then crosses his arms over his chest. “Great. Care to enlighten me? I’m just fascinated to know what you know about me that even _I_ don’t…know.” He tries to mentally walk back through that sentence, figure out where it went wrong, but quickly gives up. It’s not as though it matters.

“You can drop the act,” Dean barks, tightening his grip on the shotgun, apparently personally offended that this encounter isn’t going to script. “You’re no hunter. You’re not even human. You’re just a bloodthirsty sonuvabitch who likes helping that _thing_ you call your brother mess with people’s heads.”

Tory feels his hands ball into fists almost without his input, and forces himself to take a deep, steadying breath. “Don’t talk about my brother like that,” he says, warningly.

“Oh yeah? What’re you gonna do to stop me? Come on out of that circle and shut me up?” Dean taunts, taking a step forward. “Oh, wait. You can’t. Because _you’re not human_.”

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam says, darkly, grabbing his brother’s arm. Dean looks like he’s about to spit, but he subsides, shaking off Sam’s grip. “Maybe Dad was right, but we don’t know anything for sure yet except that the circle works.”

“Speaking of the circle. What _is_ it?” Tory asks. He doesn’t see the telltale symbols of a devil’s trap on the rug under his feet, or the pale glint of salt –

“Ashes,” Sam says. “From the wood of an ash tree. Dad wasn’t totally clear, so we used both.”

“Why? I’ve never heard of an immobilising spell with such an ingredient.” Though, to be fair, apart from a few basic incantations and the exorcism ritual, Tory mostly leaves the spellcraft to Luke. He prefers weapons he can reload.

Dean shakes his head. “Oh, come on. You don’t actually expect us to believe you don’t know?”

“Know _what?_ ” Tory finally explodes. He thinks he’s done an admirable job of keeping his temper until now, but Dean’s really found his last nerve and decided to keep stepping on it. “You’ve trapped me in this – this spelled circle and thrown accusations at me, but I still don’t know what you’re accusing me _of -_ ”

“You’re the Norse god of thunder,” Sam says, like he’s saying ‘The sky is blue’ or ‘Your hair’s a mess’.

Dean nods agreement.

Tory gapes at them.

“You’re both mad,” he says, at last.

“See?” Dean says, jabbing a thumb in Tory’s general direction. “What’d I say? People don’t talk like that.”

“I mean it. You’ve both lost whatever wits you may have once had,” Tory says, pressing a hand flat against the place in the air where it stops moving. There’s no yield to it, no give, no substance at all. Breaking through the barrier might be out of the question, but maybe if he can break the circle itself –

But again, his foot stops just shy of his toe actually touching the ring of pale ashes. Tory sighs. He really dislikes magic. “If I were a god, don’t you think I’d know about it?”

_Things I should remember, I don’t. Things I shouldn’t –_

“And if I were a god, I doubt I could be held by a circle of _ash_ ,” Tory goes on, a little louder, like he can drown out his own thoughts.

“Actually, it’s only because you’re a Norse god that that’s holding you,” Sam points out. “Ash wood was pretty near sacred in Old Norse religion. The world-tree Yggdrasil’s an ash tree. And the Æsir used it to hold really important things, like the apples of immortality.”

“Means it’s gotta be god-proof,” Dean agrees.

Sam nods. “Anybody else could walk right through. We did.”

“You really believe this,” Tory says, a sick sinking feeling settling into the pit of his stomach. “You really think this crazy idea -”

“Oh, it ain’t all ashes and magic trees,” Dean interrupts. “And it ain’t just Dad’s tip. You said yourself you ran afoul of Loki, it stormed up like nobody’s business the night you rolled into town -”

“You’re wearing the hammer,” Sam interjects.

Tory’s hand goes, reflexively, straight to his pendant. “I – I thought it was an anchor,” he says, hearing for the first time how ridiculous that sounds. “It doesn’t _look_ like a hammer,” he adds, defensively.

“It’s symbolic,” Sam sighs.

“Dad woulda beat your ass for wearing your hair that long, if you’d ever actually met him,” Dean goes on, with another defiant jab of his chin. “All it is is a convenient handle for anything that wants to take your throat out. There’s no way that accent’s from Minnesota. _And_ there’s the name. I’d ask if you’ve ever heard of subtlety, but if any of the myths Sam shoved at me are even a little bit true, then I already know the answer’s no.”

Tory doesn’t say anything. He really doesn’t have a comeback for any of this. It’s absurd. It’s impossible. It’s…

Actually, it _would_ explain a few things.

Tory tries not to let the traitor thought in, but it settles into his mind like fog pooling in a valley. Everything that’s happened since he and Luke arrived in Lawrence would make more sense. And more than that. The strange, true dreams. The Trickster who had recognised Luke.

The Vanir that had recognised Tory, that had asked his permission to take a sacrifice.

It takes a moment for the pieces of that thought to all fall together, but when they do, Tory goes stiff with horror. A sudden memory of the runes carved black into the trunk of the oldest tree in the Burkitsville orchard, of the way Darcy’s aunt’s screams had faded into the mist, flashes across the surface of his thoughts, and Tory nearly gags.

The hallway seems to grow darker, as though a cloud’s moved between them and the sun. There’s a faint grumbling on the edge of hearing that might be distant thunder.

Tory feels sick.

“What now?” he asks, quietly, turning his gaze down towards the circle holding him in place. Both Sam and Dean start at the sound of his voice, grips tightening on guns, and Tory tries not to notice. “If…if you’re right. If this thing is true, if I’m…” He has to wrinkle his face up to spit it out. It sounds ridiculous, makes him feel like a child playing pretend with his father’s very real - and very dangerous - weapons. “If I’m _Thor_ , then...what next? You must have some plan that isn’t just leaving me in this circle for the rest of eternity.”

Sam looks over at him with big, sad eyes, and Tory can’t help the bite of anger in his voice as he says, “Don’t act like I don’t know you’re going to have to kill me. We all know what pagan gods _eat_.”

“First reasonable thing you’ve said since we met you,” Dean says, but it’s lacking his usual vitriol.

“Actually,” Sam says, still looking apologetic, and Tory realises for the first time that, awful as it already is, this situation can still get worse. “You know your brother better than anyone. We’re gonna need your help to find him.”

“No,” Tory says, his voice hoarse, and then nearly jumps out of his skin at the crackle of thunder that rattles the roof. “No, you can’t ask this of me. Luke isn’t -”

\- _crowned with golden horns –_

“He isn’t part of this,” Tory says, raising his voice again, trying to will it to be steady. “I’m sure of it.”

“Just _how_ sure are you?” Dean asks, with a nod and a too-knowing stare. “Because if you’re just trying to get us to leave him alone, you gotta know all the human lives he’ll take are on your hands.”

Tory just stares at both of them, mute.

“I know,” he says, at last, miserably, and is surprised to see the first glimmers of sympathy in Dean’s eyes. He scrubs a hand through his hair, taking a step back and running up against the back of the circle, a strange, substanceless resistance. “I know, but – I know.”

“Look, this doesn’t need to be hard,” Sam says, his voice and his expression both heavy with the same kind of sincere sympathy Tory’s seen Luke use on too many witnesses of monster attacks to trust. Neither he nor Dean seem to notice the shifting movement from the shadows of the living room behind them, and Tory looks away as well, fixing his eyes back on Sam’s face. “We just need to make sure you’re right, that he isn’t part of this, that nothing else out of Norse mythology followed him home -”

He stops talking, midsentence, and gently topples forward, like an enormous redwood felled and making its long descent to the forest floor. Before Sam reaches the carpet, though, Luke, behind him, is already moving, adjusting his grip on the pistol he’d hit Sam over the head with.

Before Dean’s even got the nose of his shotgun up, one of Luke’s knives flashes through the air between them and finds its mark in Dean’s right arm. Luke follows right behind it, surging forward as the gun jerks in Dean’s grip, taking full advantage of the split second of surprise that the thrown knife buys him. His forearm collides with Dean’s throat, and Dean curls inwards with a sharp gasp, bringing up the shotgun and striking Luke in the arm with the butt even as he grasps at his collar with his free hand.

Luke brings his knee up sharply at the same time as he clubs Dean in the temple with his pistol, and Dean doubles up before he hits the floor.

Luke straightens up, running a hand through his hair and adjusting his green flannel like it’s the jacket of his unnecessarily expensive FBI suit. He looks up, meeting Tory’s eyes, and Tory feels a surge of emotion he can’t quite tease apart – relief, and shame, and horror, and wretched gratitude, and dread, all twined together like a serpent trying to swallow its own coils.

“You need to go,” Tory says, his own voice sounding hoarse in his ears. He digs in the pockets of his jacket until his fingers close over the T-bird’s keys, and tosses them to Luke, whose smile starts to fade. “Before they wake. Don’t waste time. Get as far as you can, as fast as you can, and go somewhere I won’t think to look for you.”

Luke’s smile has faded entirely, now. Tory feels his heart rising into his throat, cutting off his breath. If he has to explain to Luke – if he has to _say_ it – they don’t have _time_ –

“How long were you listening?” Tory asks.

“Long enough,” Luke says.

It feels like it takes every ounce of will in Tory’s body, but he manages a nod. “Then you know why.”

Luke’s stare is intense and unblinking. He steps forward – closer to the circle holding Tory, not towards the door.

“I’ll break that circle, we’ll both go,” he says, and though it’s seamless, there’s still the echo of something in his voice that, if Tory didn’t know better, he might name triumph.

Tory can’t find words.

“No,” he says, at last. “No, there isn’t time. Just – _go_.”

Luke stops in his tracks.

“ ‘Time’?” he says, coldly, the note of triumph evaporating. “No. Don’t pretend to lie to _me_. You intend to martyr yourself. You noble, _stupid -_ ”

He bites off the rest of his sentence with a jerk of his head, fixing a glare on Dean’s prone form to his right.

It takes Luke a moment to regain his composure. He still doesn’t meet Tory’s eyes as he says, too lightly, “And yet, while you condemn yourself to death for the sin of your nature, you’d still help me to escape?”

“Of course,” Tory answers, automatically, and Luke looks up with a strangely soft half-smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“My brother is a pagan god. _I_ am hardly fool enough not to understand what that means.”

Tory’s mouth feels as arid as any desert, as dry as any bone.

“It might not -” he starts, but Luke cuts him off with a horrible laugh.

“No,” he says. “You know. You _know_ \- what it truly means to find yourself the monster you always hated, always feared – and _now_ you would change your mind, give the monsters of the world their chance.” He spins the knife in his right hand between his fingers, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. There’s something strange about the sentences coming out of his mouth, about the way he’s talking. Something almost old-fashioned. He doesn’t quite sound like the Luke that Tory knows.

“I told you. You have to _go_ ,” Tory says, but even as he does he knows that Luke will not listen.

“No,” Luke says, and his tone brooks no argument. “No. If you truly believe us to be monsters, beyond redemption, beyond salvation – and it is _both_ of us, _brother_ \- then you cannot act by half-measures. You either let the _real_ Winchesters kill me in front of you, or you do the honours yourself.”

“No,” Tory says, before he can think.

Luke’s smile is bright and brief and predatory. “Such certainty! Well, if you truly wish me to, then I’ll go. I’ll save myself.”

The words are on the tip of Tory’s tongue, agreeing, _pleading_ – but Luke raises a hand and silences him with a look.

“On one condition. If I go, you come with me.”

The eyeless sockets of the Vanir’s rotten face flicker across Tory’s memory again, and he shudders as he shakes his head. “Luke – you know I can’t _-_ ”

“Can you not?” There’s something knowing, something almost smug, in the gaze Tory’s brother turns on him. “Not even in the service of good?”

There’s a moment of silence, pure and perfect.

“I don’t see your meaning,” Tory admits, slowly, and Luke smiles like a carnival barker, like a showman.

“This is your chance. To prove what you told me you believe about monsters. This is your opportunity to turn your fangs to the throats of those who prey on the innocent.” He paces, slowly, across the living room, pausing to give Sam’s prone form a nudge with his toe. Sam makes a small, pained noise, but doesn’t seem to wake. “People in lost ages looked to Thor, wore pendants like yours, for protection and prosperity, you know. They could again.”

“They looked to monsters like the Vanir too,” Tory says, low, and Luke rolls his eyes.

“Which we made short work of. And that was before we even knew!”

“Luke -” Tory starts, though as soon as he does he thinks, _no_ , _that name is wrong_ , and whatever else he might have said clogs his throat in strangling coils.

Luke throws his arms wide, as though he’s forgotten the loaded gun in one hand and the bright blade in the other. “We are no mere mortal men! Can you imagine what we could _do_? No more makeshift weaponry. No more scrambling, slapdash spellwork. No more horrific injuries, no more slow, agonising recoveries. No more beasties besting us. No more arriving just too late. No more barely scratching the surface of what goes bump in the night.”

Luke’s eyes are bright, almost feverish, and, Tory realises, with a hollow, sinking feeling, both strange and all too familiar. “No more _monsters._ We could cleanse this world. Finish what our father started.”

For one sickening second, Tory can’t help but admit, he’s tempted. The image of his mother’s face, vanishing in flames, unfurls again across his memory, followed by the hit parade – every monster they’ve ever fought, every corpse they’ve salted and burned, every injury either of them has ever taken, every time they’ve rubbed shoulders with death. Every time Tory’s ever thought he’d failed at the one task their father had given him – that he’d failed to keep Luke safe. That he’d lost his brother.

The lifeless bodies of everyone he ever _has_ failed to save.

But then Tory remembers the black runes scarred into the bark of an ancient tree, remembers the screaming, and he knows.

“And – what? Every year, a hunt would go wrong? We’d come just that little bit too late? Or we’d _say_ we came just that little bit too late?” He shakes his head. “I can’t. I can’t do this, Luke.”

Luke’s sneer is strange to Tory, but looks so at home on his face. “So now you know yourself to be a monster, and you’d still take the side of those who’d hunt you. Do you _want_ to die?”

Tory takes a long breath, and lets it out slowly. “Better that, than let others die for me.”

Luke’s eyes flick up, under his brows, skewering Tory with a vicious stare.

Tory’s jaw works as he swallows, but he meets Luke’s stare and holds it.

“You could still leave. I can hardly stop you, trapped like this,” he offers, and something shutters darkly in Luke’s eyes.

“Well, then. If you’re so determined that no good can come of something _monstrous_. Perhaps,” Luke says, as though to himself, as though Tory hadn’t spoken, spinning his knife around and around in one hand, “I will do as you asked me, once, and give you a hunter’s death.”

“Luke -”

“If you insist on dying for your convictions,” Luke says, his voice soft and dangerous, “then let me oblige you.”

Tory lets his eyes sink shut.

“Please just – make it quick,” he says.

Every one of his nerves are screaming at him, but Tory doesn’t move. He’s worked with guns for long enough that he recognises the little metallic noises audible under Luke’s sigh, but he clenches his jaw and tries to keep still.

The thunder of a pistol discharging makes him start, but there’s no sudden bloom of pain, no swift and sweeping darkness. Tory dares to crack his eyes open, to see Luke glaring at him and pointing the pistol at the floor, where a hole in the carpet is still smoking faintly.

“Why?” Luke demands. “You – _imbecile_. All your fine speeches, all your comfortable hypocrisy… You really _meant_ it?”

“What?” Tory asks, feeling stupid.

Luke doesn’t explain, doesn’t even pause. “You really would let me kill you. Without even trying to prove you could be other, be _better_ than what you are.” He bites off his own words, before starting again. “All of this – _all_ of this was only to make you understand _-_ ”

He breaks off once more, his expression wild, his eyes shining with, Tory realises, not just madness but tears on the verge of spilling over.

“Why do you always have to be the good one,” Luke says, shortly, raising his knife –

And suddenly flies sideways, slamming into the wall.

It takes Tory a moment to parse what’s happened. It looks as though an enormous, invisible hand has just smacked Luke off his feet. He looks over the other Winchesters, and sees Sam pushing himself up off the floor, one hand outstretched in Luke’s direction, a grimace on his face.

“Dean,” he says, urgently, and then, when his brother doesn’t move, “Dean!”

A long, low groan from the Dean-shaped lump on the floor is the only answer he gets, before Dean rises, painfully, to one knee, giving himself a shake. He rubs his throat, gingerly, pulling a face.

His voice rasps hoarsely as he says, “That little shit.”

Dean scoops up his shotgun as he gets to his feet, before kicking Luke’s dropped pistol and knife away behind him, and a traitorous thought bleeds like poison into Tory’s head. He can’t kill his own brother, any more than he can let a maneating pagan god walk free. But maybe – maybe, trapped as he is, if he only waits a little longer, the choice will be taken from him altogether.

“Where’d you stash the stake?” Dean asks, with a glance over at Sam, which turns into a double-take. Tory sees, quickly, what Dean sees. Strain is written clearly over Sam’s face, a trickle of dark blood leaking from his nose. “Sam?”

“I can’t keep holding him -” Sam cuts himself off with a wince, pressing his outstretched hand to his temple instead.

Luke springs back up almost as soon as Sam’s concentration breaks, mouth set in a firm line and all trace of his earlier emotion erased. He doesn’t have time to launch anything sharp at Dean, though, because Dean fires the shotgun.

Tory throws himself against the barrier, a shout tearing out of him unbidden, but the sudden sharp burst of viscera he’s expecting doesn’t materialise. Instead, a fine, grey mist explodes out of the shotgun’s muzzle. There’s a brief burst of light at Luke’s throat, and the powdery stuff seems to strike against an invisible obstacle about a foot in front of Luke, hanging in the air for a moment before it starts to settle down onto the carpet.

“ _Told_ you ash shotgun shells would work,” Dean boasts, as Sam picks himself off the floor, pulling something from the wall behind the couch as he scrambles to his feet.

“Okay, only at this close range,” Sam protests. He’s holding – Tory blinks at it. It looks like an old wooden baseball bat, carved to a point at one end. “It’s got no weight, it just disintegrates, it won’t travel any distance -”

“Just how many Norse gods are you expecting us to have to tangle with? It ain’t exactly a huge pantheon, and we got two of the three major-league players right here,” Dean grumbles, tucking the shotgun under his arm.

Luke looks down at the half-circle of fallen grey dust on the floor. With a yank, he pulls the blackened remnants of the used-up protective charm from around his throat, tossing it aside. “You meant to bind me.”

“You bet,” Dean says. “Guess it’s too much to ask for you to hold still. Sam? Wanna do the honours?”

“With pleasure,” Sam says, tossing his head back as he shifts his grip on the bat.

It seems to occur to Luke at the same time as it strikes Tory that, if ash wood can keep them contained, it might be able to do unknown damage to them as a weapon. And that the best way to kill a Trickster is a wooden stake through the heart.

Luke backs away, hands raised. His expression is grim, his eyes darting, his mouth set. He stops, with his back against the wall, and Tory can almost see his thoughts unspool around him. Without his weapons, with his protection spent, all Luke has to rely on are his wits and his own strength – which, while both prodigious, are evenly matched with those of the two other hunters. And he’s outnumbered, two to one.

“Can we talk about this?” he asks, and Sam and Dean both smile. They’re not particularly nice smiles.

“Somehow, I kinda thought you might say that,” Sam says.

Then he charges forward, stake raised.

The fight is brief and confused. Luke seems to be holding his own at first, graceful and strong and fast as a snake. And he doesn’t hesitate to spend the few prepared spells he always carries, catching Dean with a hex that makes him cough up a ball of needles, throwing fire by the handful to set Sam’s shoulders alight. But he’s only one man – even if what he is is not, really, a man.

And, even though few of their blows land, the – the _real_ Winchester brothers hit hard.

Tory slams both fists against the barrier with all his strength, tries to drive against it with his shoulder like he’s breaking down a door. He’s not sure whose aid he’d go to if he did get out, but it doesn’t matter – there’s no change in the absolute, unshakeable resistance from the barrier. He finally settles, leaning his forehead against the place where his movement stops, exhausted and furious with himself. All the strength he’s spent years building up and fighting for, and he can’t move a little _air_ –

But he had, hadn’t he? When they’d first met Sam and Dean, when Luke had dropped the box of photos, when the thunderstorm had rolled in – it had come in on a cold wind. A wind that had blown the real Winchesters’ photos around.

And ashes don’t weigh much.

“All right,” Tory mutters, wrapping a hand around the pendant Sam claimed is a hammer. He’s not sure what he’s expecting – some kind of electricity, maybe, some sort of spark, a rush of power or – well, something, anyway. All he feels, though, is slightly stupid. Standing trapped by a circle of thin air, talking to a hammer that’s not a hammer. How, again, is this his life? “Luke makes a point, there must be _some_ perks to this whole miserable business. Come on.”

For a moment, nothing happens.

And then the trees outside murmur, leaves shivering and branches rasping against each other. The wind rises in a muted roar, like surf breaking against the shore, rattling at the windows, sending the screens rippling in shimmering waves. The front door slams open in a howl of wind. Stray leaves from outside and clouds of dust from the hall are both snatched up and thrown into the air around them all, spiralling up to the ceiling before fluttering back towards the floor.

Bits of burnt-black charcoal and flakes of pale ash join them.

The resistance suddenly vanishes out from under Tory’s arms, and he stumbles forward, barely catching himself as he faceplants into the floor.

When he raises his head, Luke’s flat on his back on the living room carpet, Sam standing with a foot planted on his chest.

For a moment, Tory thinks Luke’s going to spit in rage and defiance, that he’s going to throw Sam off and get back to his feet. That he’s going to keep fighting until the Winchesters either beat him down or, more likely, until he can get away and disappear forever. But Sam raises the stake with both hands - and Luke looks up and meets Tory’s eyes.

The second that Luke holds Tory’s gaze seems to stretch for an eternity. That strange pinched look has vanished from around his eyes. Instead, they’re wide with mingled fear and desperate hope, so raw that Tory has to look away.

He turns his face to the side, and Luke, somehow, deflates. All the tension, all the motion, seems to bleed out of him, and he just looks back up at Sam, watching his own doom descend with exhausted resignation. It hardens into resolve in the barest sliver of a second before he lets his eyes sink closed.

His words, unexpectedly, fly back into Tory’s mind. _You either let the real Winchesters kill me in front of you, or you do the honours yourself._

Sam drives the stake down with all his strength.

There’s a brilliant, blinding flash, an eruption of sound that shakes the house to its foundations, and the stake explodes in Sam’s hands. He goes flying back, shards of blackened wood thrown into the air in all directions, and smashes into the couch. The smell of burning hair mingles with the sharp, tinny smell of ozone.

Tory pushes himself, carefully, to his feet.

Dean raises the shotgun again, but Tory barely gestures and lightning arcs, blue and blinding, from his own arm and earths itself in the barrel of the gun. Dean shouts, falling back and shaking out his arms. The stock of the gun’s split in two with a jagged black scorch mark, the firing mechanism fused into one piece.

Tory feels – strange. Like he’s slightly too big for his body. Like the smallest movement will let loose the electricity racing just beneath his skin.

“Don’t touch him,” he says, and is startled by the sound of his own voice. It isn’t different, isn’t exactly louder, it just seems to have…a depth, a _resonance_ he’s never heard there before. “I won’t let either of you lay a hand on my brother.”

He doesn’t recognise the voice that echoes from behind him. “Annnnnd… _scene_.”

…

_Then_

“Don’t let them touch you!”

The shouted warning came moments too late, at the same time as a glacier-blue hand closed on Loki’s arm. The armour flaked away under the jotun’s grip, rendered brittle and useless in the flash of blistering cold, and Loki braced for the deadening sting of frostbite –

Which didn’t come.

Instead, he watched in horror as the deep blue of the winter sky overhead, of the densely-packed ice, of the monsters who inhabited this realm, bled out from the place where the jotun’s hand made contact and over his skin, muffling the biting cold.

Loki recovered first. His assailant was still looking at Loki’s arm when Loki dug a knife into the giant’s belly and split it from sternum to pelvis. The blue retreated back from Loki’s skin as the jotun’s hand fell away, and he gave his own hand an experimental flex, straightening with a long, deep breath. There would be time to deal with this _later_ –

There were still eyes upon him.

Loki looked up, across a distance far too short, and met a gaze as blue as his ensorcelled arm had been. For once, Thor the Thunderer looked thunderstruck himself, his eyes darting from Loki’s face down to the bare, pale flesh of his exposed arm, and even before Loki moved reflexively to cover it, he knew.

Thor had seen.

…

Loki had thought he had seen his father’s wrath. He realised, now, that he had seen nothing.

He certainly had never thought he’d see Odin’s rage turned on _Thor_ , of all people. Loki should have been celebrating the success of his plan, but somehow, the victory felt hollow.

He hung back when their father ordered Heimdall and Thor’s friends away, unsure whether it would look worse for him to disobey his father’s orders or to leave his brother’s side, and unwilling to let his father out of his sight. An explanation was owed, and Loki would wait out mortal lifetimes if need be in order to get it.

Thor, unfortunately, had never known such patience.

Loki would have thought that even Thor might think twice about defying their father, especially after having to be rescued from the disaster he himself had created by doing exactly that. Perhaps Thor had too long stood unopposed, even by those who should have held his reins. Their father’s strong words seemed to fall on deaf ears.

And then, Thor spoke, and Loki wished at once that he had made his escape with the others.

“You would keep us from Jotunheim, yes – but not for the sake of peace alone!” Thor cut an impressive figure, all swirling cape and gleaming armour, and yet, still, somehow, he seemed nothing so much as a petulant child. “What secret have you kept from us? What _truly_ drove the conquering king of Asgard to seek treaty with monsters?”

_Monsters_.

“Thor,” Loki said, sharply, before he let himself think better of it. He forced himself not to cower back when their father’s furious eye turned toward him, addressing himself instead to his brother and cursing the whining note which bled into his words. “Have a little patience, now is not the time -”

“Did _you_ know?”

Thor seemed to see whatever answer he had sought in Loki’s face, because he did not wait for Loki to speak before turning back upon their father. “What lies have you told us?”

Odin’s eye was steely, his gaze impassive. “You are an impetuous boy, and you understand nothing.”

“You cannot even admit it!” Thor bellowed, one arm outflung towards Loki, who took a step back. He was struck by the sudden, crystalline certainty that control of the events he had set in motion, already sliding away from him, had now irretrievably slipped from his grasp.

“Thor, I don’t want -” he tried, low and urgent, but, as ever, Thor barrelled headfirst into disaster with no heed for Loki’s words.

“Tell me! Are Loki and I brothers by blood?”

“You meddle in affairs that do not concern you,” their father said, voice rising with each word, “and by your meddling upset things better left alone. Because of your arrogance, your interference, we stand once more on the brink of war -”

“I saw -”

“You saw me change my shape,” Loki tried, hardly caring if he sounded desperate. He wanted to know, yes, _needed_ to know – but _Thor_ did not. “You saw me defend myself against that jotun’s frostbite, did you not hear the warning -”

Thor brushed his words aside as though they were of no consequence. “I saw your _face_. You were as startled as I.” He rounded once more on their father, ignoring Loki completely. “What else have you kept from us?”

It seemed only Loki heard the danger in their father’s voice. “There are many things you are not prepared for. I see now that kingship lies among their numbers.”

“Because I will not let an insult to Asgard stand?” Thor bellowed, and Loki took another step back, considering the door and the distance between it and his feet. “Because I will not accept a _lie_? Because I dare what you are too frightened – too _cowardly_ – to do?”

Loki drew in a sharp breath and held it.

“You shout and beat your fists and demand what is not yours to ask, like a spoiled child denied a sweet!” their father growled out, his face turning red when Thor cut off his next words.

“Not mine? The truth is _not mine_?”

Loki made his decision and started for the door, too late. He froze under the weight of both his father and his brother’s stares.

“Perhaps that is so,” Thor continued, with a calmness that Loki trusted no more than he would his own oath. “But if the truth is anyone’s to demand, then surely it is Loki’s.”

Loki shook his head.

Thor’s booming voice struck like a hammer blow. “Be honest for once, brother. Do you not wish to know?”

“Not like this,” Loki said, softly.

Thor went on as though he had not heard. Perhaps he hadn’t. Loki barely heard his bluster. Odin’s gaze on him was terrible with pity, and Loki _knew_. “Thor, shut up.”

Thor broke off, blinking in surprise and opening his mouth to spill yet more impassioned words. Loki cut them short with a gesture of his hand. “I said shut _up_! You always do this! You always take everything too far, with no regard for who or what you leave in ruins in your wake!”

“Loki?” Thor started, sounding _hurt_ , sounding _surprised_ , and a terrible black rage welled in Loki’s chest, rising to block his throat, a vicious desire to show Thor how hurt truly felt.

“This is why I did it, you oaf, you imbecile! _This_ is why I goaded you on to take your vengeance on Jotunheim! It was easy, I hardly needed say a word. You would hear no council – and now your friend is hurt and we all might have died and we face war and you _still_ have no care for aught but what _you_ want, even at the expense of the one you call brother! You never listen! You never _think_!”

The hurt on Thor’s face had deepened, as had the surprise, and it was with a horrible barbed satisfaction that Loki turned to their fa- to _Odin_ , to see the pity in his look turn to horror.

“Loki,” Thor said. “You…?”

“Encouraged your little rampage,” Loki spat. “Suggested it, in terms you could understand. Let you believe it to be your own idea. Though you were so eager for bloodshed, so eager to spit your defiance in Father’s face, you did all the difficult work yourself.” He looked from his father to his brother, throwing back his head in the face of the lack of understanding he saw there. “ _Neither_ of you would listen. Thor is not fit to be king. As he has now so masterfully demonstrated.”

He did not meet Thor’s eyes.

“The treasury?” their – _Odin_ said, heavily.

Loki paused the barest moment too long. “Not I.”

Odin’s eye sank closed.

When he opened it again, Loki felt a cold fear strike at his heart. He had never seen such rage – or such resolve – from the man he had called father.

“Thor Odinson,” he said, turning from one to the other. “Loki…” The golden haft of Gungnir slammed into place in the Bifrost’s mechanism. “Laufeyson.”

Loki found his tongue frozen in his mouth. “Father -” Thor started, but faltered under his father’s stare.

The anger that suffused Odin’s voice was barely tempered by regret as he pronounced, “I cast you out.”

…

Loki could hear Thor rising, beside him, the same assortment of grumbles and exhales as his brother made rising from the dirt of the ring after a good sparring match.

No. Not his brother.

Whatever grit they had landed in abraded Loki’s face and invaded his nose and mouth, making him cough. He made no effort to rise, lying instead where he had fallen and watching the place where the Bifrost had so recently receded. Above him, there was now only clear, untroubled darkness, scattered with unfamiliar stars.

Hours ago, he had believed he had a home, somewhere up beyond that placid sky. A family. A future.

Now he had nothing.

“Heimdall!” Thor was calling, over and over, up at the unforgiving sky. “Heimdall!”

“Would you cease,” Loki said, to the stars, perhaps, or the wind. Certainly not to Thor, who _never_ listened. “No one’s coming.”

To his surprise, Thor fell silent.

“Did you really do this?” he asked, and Loki did not feel a twinge of guilt at the betrayal in his voice. “Loki, why?”

“Were you not _listening_?” Loki demanded, or tried to demand, but it fell from his lips closer to a laugh, or perhaps a sob. “You charge into everything without a thought for the damage you might do. See where you’ve landed us now!”

Thor’s golden head leaned into Loki’s view, his glower blocking out the unfamiliar stars, and Loki squashed the urge to spit at him. It would, of course, only fall back upon his own face. Was that not always the way with Thor? “Where _I’ve_ landed us? I was not the one who set us on a course for Jotunheim -”

“I think you’ll find,” Loki said, “you were.”

He pushed himself up to his elbows, rose to one knee and then to his feet, forcing Thor to step back. Loki shook sand from his hair as he surveyed their surroundings. A desert. It seemed somehow fitting.

“You tricked me,” Thor growled, beside him. Loki did not dignify him with his attention. Were those lights on the horizon?

“I’ve tricked you countless times. This was not one of them. I only helped you resolve your mind to what you already wanted to do.” He fixed a smile on his face before turning back to Thor. “If you recall, I even warned you _not_ to go to Jotunheim. _You_ were the one who insisted we defy every order, every condition of peace -”

“If you had not suggested it to me, I never would have -”

“ _Liar!_ ”

Thor took another step back, apparently startled by Loki’s shout. “Loki,” he started, again, warningly, but his hammer no longer hung at his hip and he seemed somehow sapped of some – radiance or vitality, something – and the full weight of their – of _his_ father’s favour was no longer at his back and this had been too long in coming.

“You would not heed my words on Asgard or Jotunheim, perhaps the air of Midgard will open your ears? You are a _bully_ , Thor!”

“And you a rotten snake!” Thor roared back. “I have long known you were jealous, but this -”

“Jealous?” Loki could not help a disbelieving laugh. Thor did not seem to share his amusement.

“Yes. Because I would one day take the throne, and you never would.”

“Well, now we know why, do we not,” Loki said, silkily, and relished Thor’s momentary flinch.

“But I never thought you mad enough to destroy us both, just to try to keep me from my birthright -”

“Oh, it was never meant to be _us both_ ,” Loki went on, still light, still silky, still easy, the words spilling from his lips like poison. “It was only ever meant to be you. But that hardly matters now, does it. As usual, you found a way to drag me down with you.”

For the first time, the words caught on his tongue, as he said, “And now I - I can’t ever go back.”

“Oh, what a shame.”

Both Thor and Loki spun at the unfamiliar voice.

From the corner of his eye, Loki saw Thor’s hand grasp at thin air, the familiar gesture to call a weapon that would no longer heed him. Loki would laugh, except that his own hands closed on nothing when he reached for his knives. Except that fire failed to spark at his fingertips, and, when he searched the place his power should have dwelt, he found only emptiness. Emptiness, and the edges of a vast and burning cold that filled him with a wild, formless dread.

The thing that looked back at them was, in seeming, a Midgardian of middle years, dressed in a sharply-cut suit of dark cloth. The sand had left no marks upon his clothing, and, it seemed, his feet had left no marks upon the sand. Loki could see no sign of his arrival, of how he had made his way to this desolate place, had heard nothing – and yet, was certain the thing that appeared to be a man had not been there moments before.

“Who are you?” Thor demanded, ever the prince royal, ever entitled, even stripped of his title and powers. Loki briefly hated him.

The stranger smiled, wide but a little stiffly, as though unused to making such an expression with his face. Loki started to reach for the knife he kept concealed at the small of his back, but was horrified to find himself frozen, unable to move. Even his tongue refused to obey his commands. Judging by the grunt of surprise from beside him, Thor had come to the same realisation, though Loki could not turn his head to see.

“Call me Zachariah,” the stranger said, and Loki decided he most certainly did not like the stranger’s smile. “And I find it _so sad_ when brothers fight.”

…

_Now_

“Annnnd… _scene_.”

Thor blinks awake, shaking his head to try to dislodge the cobwebs of dream still clinging there.

But the empty dwelling lingers, as do the Midgardian hunters of monsters. When he looks down at himself, he sees still the garb of the mortal Torvald Winchester, Mjölnir hanging small and unfamiliar in her guise as a pendant around his neck.

Not a dream, then.

He thinks, first, naturally, of Loki, but Loki yet lies still and silent upon the floor. The voice that speaks is new, unfamiliar, and Thor finds he already mislikes it. He turns his head, glancing back over his shoulder, to see what looks to be a man advanced in years, wearing a dark suit in the fashion of Midgard, clapping slowly and somehow mockingly as he walks from the room on the other side of the hall. It takes Thor a moment to place him as the one who had come upon him and Loki in the desert. Though he wears the form of a mortal, yet there is something too… _bright_ about him. And the smug grin on his face makes Thor itch to wipe it off.

The cord holding Mjölnir in place around his neck snaps easily, the hammer restored to her true shape in his hand, and in a lightning flash he is once more clothed and armoured as befits a prince of Asgard. Lightning races to earth itself in the man – or the thing in the guise of one – but it does not seem to affect him. He barely spares a glance in Thor’s direction, only brushing off his lapels with an expression of dismissive contempt.

“Put a cork in it, Sparky,” he says.

“Zachariah,” Dean growls, exasperation heavy in his voice. “Hey, _I_ came up with that nickname.”

“And I’m sure that required a great deal of mental effort,” the man-shaped being in the suit – Zachariah? – says.

“What is this?” Dean demands, casting a wary look at Loki lying on the floor before edging around him, towards the couch and Sam. “What’s your bullshit excuse for messing with us this time?”

Zachariah smiles, a broad, straight grin that fails to reach his eyes. “Oh, no bullshit. This was a very important object lesson in -” He snaps his fingers, and reaches out to spin the bright red wheel divided into many equal sections which stands next to him. Thor does not recall it having been there before, and yet it seems as though it had been, all along. The illusion explains much about the last several months, if months they truly were.

Zachariah lets the wheel spin until it slows, then carefully examines the slice which has settled at the top. “The dangers of blind loyalty to your brother.”

Dean folds his arms across his chest. “Somehow, this isn’t sounding any less like bullshit.”

Zachariah’s smile does not falter. “Orders from the very top. I was supposed to show you how putting all your faith in your brother, choosing to side with him when he becomes monstrous, will make you a monster too.”

Dean nods, his brow furrowed. “Yeah, sure. So for that, you had to make us relive the first – what, six months after Dad went missing, with a couple _gods_ thrown in the mix for flavour? And how could it be ‘orders from the very top’ when we all just saw you spin that wheel?”

Zachariah blinks, as though innocent, though his smile still belies that. “What wheel?”

Dean opens his mouth, starts to point – but surely enough, no wheel stands beside Zachariah. Zachariah cants his head to one side, still wearing the smirk, but then Sam groans from the couch, and all of Dean’s attention goes straight to his brother. “Sam! Sammy, are you okay?”

“Whmf,” Sam says, intelligently, raising a hand to the back of his head with a wince as he sits. “Oof. Remember that time we got hit by a truck? I think that hurt less than this.”

Everyone seems to have forgotten Thor is there, which suits him. With one last, wary glance at Zachariah – he still cannot be sure what Zachariah _is_ , but he knows that, god or not, he dares not turn his unguarded back upon him – he kneels down next to where Loki is still lying flat on his back. Loki has folded one hand over his heart, but otherwise seems not to have moved, staring directly up at the ceiling.

“Loki?” Thor asks, and Loki shuts his eyes, a desperate smile crossing his face.

“It wasn’t even _about_ us,” he says, with a choked laugh, to the ceiling. Then, he sits, in one smooth motion, brushing himself off as though nothing has happened. “Where are my knives?”

…

They leave the Winchesters and Zachariah to sort out their grievances amongst themselves. Well, to be entirely accurate, Zachariah says, “Good show, boys. Take five,” and, without anyone moving, Thor and Loki find themselves out on the street.

Neither are any the worse for wear, though, now that they have been restored to themselves. Or so Thor thinks, until he expresses his concern about the T-bird.

“We don’t have a _car_ ,” Loki says, as though this should have been obvious. And it should. Asgard has never seen need of the ‘internal combustion engine’. The Thunderbird is nothing more than a lingering strand of false memory. Still, its absence leaves Thor with an unaccountable sense of loss.

He cannot explain it. All of it was based in a falsehood. And yet, a lifetime of memories not his own still dwell somewhere, carefully hoarded, in the back of his mind.

Loki will not meet his eyes, concentrating instead on brushing miniscule remnants of grey dust from his green flannel shirt. It is strange, to see him still attired as a Midgardian, and Thor suspects that to tolerate such garb, Loki still must not have regained his powers to replace the flimsy garments with his own familiar armour. Whether this is due to the ash that the Winchesters fired at him or their father’s decree, Thor cannot be sure.

“I see you’ve earned Mjölnir’s favour once more,” Loki says, as though reading Thor’s thoughts, without looking at him.

“Aye,” Thor says, stroking his thumb over the leather grip. He has not let his hammer leave his hand since she returned to him.

Loki pauses for a brief moment before he speaks again, a silence which belies the bitterness that fills his words. “Then you’ll return soon.”

Thor turns his gaze skyward, and does not answer at once. The clouds he had summoned have begun to disperse, and the sky is shading orange in the west.

“Home. To Asgard,” Loki says, sharply, as though Thor has failed to understand his meaning. “Now that you’ve made a great show of offering yourself as a sacrifice to protect the hypothetical innocent. Now that you’ve proven yourself _worthy_.”

“You arranged this, did you not,” Thor says, rather than try to respond to Loki’s barbed words. “John Winchester did not tell those two where to find me, how to trap me, how to kill me. It was you.”

Loki shrugs one shoulder with apparently perfect unconcern. “I had to show you somehow. You, Thor, are not a man who learns a lesson until you have seen and felt and lived it for yourself.”

“So I have you to thank, that Mjölnir once more seeks my hand,” Thor says, and Loki lets out a choked, miserable bark of a laugh.

“Call for Heimdall already. I cannot stand the sight of you.”

Thor turns his face once more skyward. But there is a strange reluctance in him, that strangles his throat and stills his tongue whenever he thinks to call to Heimdall. A fear. That he may, as he did in the desert, call and call and hear no answer.

It is foolishness. Surely it was some doing of Zachariah or whoever gave his orders that has kept them hidden from the gatekeeper’s sight.

Surely they are not meant to continue in exile.

Thor is _not_. Nor is Loki. Thor knows this. His father is just and wise, and would not mete out a punishment that was undeserved – or set a task that was unconquerable. Thor was to learn his lesson, and then recover Mjölnir and his powers and be free to return home. Surely, for Loki, the same must be true.

But there is a memory, or a shadow of a memory. A voice – John Winchester’s voice. Telling his own son to leave, if he likes, but not to come back.

“You speak,” Thor says, carefully, because it seems of late that each conversation is mined with traps where Loki is concerned, “as though you would not return with me.”

Loki laughs, a wild, bitter sound. His smile is bright and wide and mirthless. “Why should I return where I do not belong and am not wanted? I know my _place_ now, Thor, and it is not in Asgard.”

“As long as I dwell there,” Thor says, “there will always be a place for you in Asgard.”

Loki snorts.

When Thor says nothing further, Loki rolls his eyes and adds, “Fa- _Odin_ may disagree.”

Thor considers that.

“Let him,” he says, folding his arms across his chest. “But I do not think he will. He is your father too, Loki, by bond if not by blood.”

Loki stares at him in disbelief.

“You are a fool,” he says, after a long, speechless moment. “And what will you do, _King_ Thor, when your decree is overturned by your better? Will you be shocked when your great, wise father, conqueror of Jotunheim, declares that there is no place at his bosom for a _rotten snake_? For a viper, for a worm at the root!” His voice hardly wavers, rising in pitch and volume both, and Thor knows that, had Loki his magic, they would long since have come to blows.

Thor considers him. Loki’s hair is in disarray, his eyes bright with fury, his colour high from what appears to be the most genuine distress Thor has seen him in since they were both children. That he looks such a wreck is not, perhaps, remarkable in itself. That he’s allowed Thor to _see_ him looking such a wreck, that he’s making no effort to hide it behind a mask of composure –

“You say you do not belong in Asgard. Yet you still wish to rule it?” Thor asks, finally, carefully, and Loki’s eyes go wide, that baleful green gaze fixed onto Thor.

“I never wanted the _throne_ ,” he says, shaking his head. “I only ever wanted -”

He bites his own words off, sharply, turning his face away.

“Oh, did you not? And yet you did everything in your power to keep _me_ from it. You told Father that I was not fit to be king,” Thor says, straining to swallow the bubble of hurt resentment that rises to sting the back of his throat. With a great effort, he keeps his voice level. “You set me up to fail, on Jotunheim. You tried to have the Winchesters _kill_ me -”

“Yes, yes, I betrayed your trust. Honestly, Thor, one would think by now you’d have learned to expect that.” Loki throws the words carelessly out into the clear air between them like a knife, sharp-edged and gleaming in the fading sun.

“Perhaps,” Thor says, cut, before he can think better of it, “this is _why_ you are not wanted in Asgard.”

Loki whirls. His smile is terrible.

“Oh, _yes,_ ” he agrees, through bared teeth.

Thor does not see the blow coming until it lands. It leaves his head ringing. He takes a stumbling step back, caught off his guard, startled into momentary stupefaction. He would never have expected Loki to strike him, to invite Thor to retaliate in kind. Not _now._ Not bound as he is. Not with his Midgardian curses spent. They both know that Loki cannot beat his brother in a fair fight. Without his trickery, without his magic –

It would be suicide.

“Loki -” Thor tries, taking another step back and giving Mjölnir a warning whirl. The fading remnants of the storm grumble even as Loki presses forward, ever with that feral snarl contorting his fine features. His weapons lie behind him, back in the house where the trap was laid, but Loki is undeterred. He grasps hold of the post of a street sign, tearing it free from its housing embedded in the sidewalk with what appears to be little effort, and spins it like a quarterstaff, continuing to advance. Clearly, even if his magic is bound, his strength is still that of one of the Æsir –

The realisation sends a jolt through Thor like lightning, distracting enough that he moves too slowly and takes the edge of the swung sign to the face. It slices at his cheek, ringing dully off of bone. Of course, his brother does not have the strength of one of the _Æsir_. Because Loki is not Æsir at all.

_You know. You_ know _\- what it truly means to find yourself the monster you always hated, always feared._

“Yes, I took your chance for the throne! I humiliated you! I betrayed you!” Loki shouts, when Thor blocks his next swing and breaks the signpost in two with a blow from Mjölnir. Flinging his offences in Thor’s face. Goading him. This time, Thor does not take the bait, and for once it is Loki, swinging one-half of the stout metal signpost in each hand, who presses Thor to fight. “I’ve been a traitor since before I even knew enough to hate you! Before either of us ever knew what wretched thing lay within me! Yes, I tried to kill you, but _you_ were fool enough to keep such a creature close enough to sting!”

“It is not your blood that is treacherous,” Thor grinds out, under the onslaught of blows with which Loki batters at him. He is the stronger, there has never been any question – but Loki is lithe and quick and considers no strike too underhanded. And, unlike Thor, he does not seem daunted by the thought of doing lasting harm to his brother. “But your actions.”

Loki’s eyes are bright, with malice or madness or misery, Thor cannot say. “Oh, so you have learned something of wordcraft at last! If truly there is a difference, then call me brother _now_ , Thor.” He feints right, and, when Thor moves to block his blow, catches him under the chin with one-half of the post and slams the other into his unprotected side.

The full measure of Loki’s strength must be behind each strike. Thor’s head snaps back, teeth cracking against each other, pain shocking through him. For a moment, thrown back, he loses his footing, seeing stars.

“Or have you not the _stomach_ for it?” Loki snaps, too bitterly to really be a taunt. He presses the brief advantage he has won, driving his makeshift weapons hard into Thor’s belly. Earthly steel crumples against Thor’s armour, doing him no injury, but the wind is driven from his lungs, and his balance, already unsteady, fails him. His feet go from under him, and Loki throws him back.

His back punches through the high fence surrounding the empty house with a splintering sound, and he smacks down against the hard earth in a heap of shattered wood. The world goes briefly black as Thor struggles to catch his breath.

When his vision clears, Loki stands before him, framed in the hole Thor had left in the fence and silhouetted against the reddening, sinking sunlight. He presents a perfect target, and a single blow from Mjölnir –

Thor stays his own hand. He knows not how mortal his brother may yet be.

Loki has not, of course, stopped talking, his voice sinking into a menacing snarl. “You saw, just as I did! You heard Odin’s words! Do not now pretend not to know what I _am!_ ”

He steps forward. Thor tries to rise to meet him, but finds, with a shock of cold, that he is bound to the earth below him.

He thinks, at first, that Loki has kept one of his prepared spells in reserve. And then, in disbelief, that Loki too has been restored to his full powers. But when Thor smashes his way free from his bonds, he quickly discovers that neither the painstaking casting of a mortal spell nor the green-edged mischief he knows well from their boyhood had held him fast to the ground.

It was simply ice.

“Look me in the eye,” Loki demands, tossing aside his makeshift weaponry. His hands appear empty, but Thor knows well that this means nothing. “Look me in the _eye_ , and tell me what you know I am.”

A single word looms large in Thor’s mind, a thousand echoes of his own voice repeating it, over the last few months, over the last few centuries. The thing that Luke and Tory had so hated, so feared. The thing he himself had once sworn to destroy once and for all.

He knows what Loki would hear him say. Knows, with a sick, wrenching certainty, what fate Loki would have him condemn him to.

_Monster._

The word cuts as sharp as any knife. As deep as runes scarred black into ancient bark.

His own words come back to him, from another lifetime. _I should know by now that you just wanted to see how far you could push._

Thor meets Loki’s eyes. This time, he does not look away.

“You are a frost giant,” he says. “And my brother.”

The scream of rage that bursts from Loki is wordless and wretched, like that of an animal in pain. He flies at Thor, empty-handed, and the surprise is great enough that, for a moment, Loki gains the upper hand.

It does not last long. What remains of the fight is barely more than a scuffle, and ends in short order with Loki pinned against the sidewalk, Mjölnir resting immovable on his chest. His jaw works as he stares furiously up at the sky, which is starting to fade to indigo at the apex of its dome. Soon, there will be stars.

“I hate you,” Loki says, at last, with difficulty.

“No, you don’t,” Thor says, settling onto the sidewalk beside him.

The insects hum. The sun sinks lower. A car passes by on the street beyond, with a whirr of wheels.

It’s another long moment before Loki speaks again, clearly wrestling his voice back under control. “Had I my magic now, I would have struck you dead where you stand, _long_ ago.”

“And why then have you not?”

Loki’s stare is pure venom.

Thor shrugs. “Magic or no, I know you keep a knife about you. If you truly wished me dead, there were a thousand ways you could have killed the mostly-mortal Tory Winchester while he still knew nothing of the truth. You could simply have stayed hidden and let the Winchesters do away with me. But you didn’t. You would not see me dead, Loki. You don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate _Tory_.”

Thor thinks on this.

There is no reason he can see, considering the mortal he had believed himself to be, for Loki to harbour any greater love for Tory than for his true self. They are similar in every way that matters.

Save, Thor realises, for one.

Of course the Æsir do not take human sacrifices. But Tory had not known that. All that Tory Winchester had known was that he was not as he had believed himself. That he was something dangerous. Something _wrong_. Something he had sworn to slay, as his father had before him.

And he had been willing and ready to let himself be destroyed.

Thor thinks, again, of the way Loki had looked, in the moment before lightning had torn the stake of ash wood asunder, in the moment he had watched his doom descend. Resigned. Resolved.

He thinks again, as he has not in centuries, of the tales they were told as children. Of glory, and conquest. Of savage, dangerous beasts. Monsters he himself had once sworn to slay, as his father had before him.

_All of this was only to make you understand._

From outside, now, it is clear that John Winchester was not infallible, had not known – or had refused to believe – that there was more to the world than heroes and monsters. Yet, while Thor had believed himself one of the man’s sons, he had seen nothing of it. Had _let_ himself see nothing of it. Had only allowed himself to know John as just and wise, a man who would not mete out a punishment that was undeserved or set a task that was unconquerable.

For their father to condemn _monsters_ , knowing that his own son numbered amongst those he condemned…

_But_ Father _isn’t the reason I came back._

“All right,” Thor says, at last.

Loki squints at him in confusion.

“All right,” Thor repeats, rising. He reaches down, taking hold of Mjölnir’s handle, but pauses. “If I let you up, will you refrain from stabbing me?”

“No promises,” Loki sulks.

That, Thor decides, is likely the best he will get.

He lifts Mjölnir from his brother’s chest, and steps quickly out of arm’s reach – but it is not needed. Loki makes not even a cursory attempt to nick his ankles with a knife. Truly he must feel low.

Thor gives the hammer a considering toss, and then a swing, and lightning crazes over him. When it clears, he is clad once more in the garb of the Midgardian monster-hunter, Mjölnir small and docile in his fist. He ties the ends of the cord that dangles from her handle around his neck, turning a smile on Loki, who seems frozen in uncertainty. “Well?”

“What is this,” Loki hisses.

Thor shrugs. “You’re not going home. I’m not going either.”

“Are you mad?” Loki demands, rising somewhat awkwardly to his feet. “Of course you will go back. You - you’re the _prince_.”

Thor shrugs. “The people of Midgard face far greater – and subtler – threats than we had realised. Threats which, if this ‘Zachariah’ is anything by which to judge, may yet grow to endanger even Asgard. And I believe _someone_ mentioned something about what good we might do here, together, with our…advantages.” He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his denim pants, surveying the street. “If the lesson I was meant to learn is as I believe, if it is the place of a true warrior and a good man to help those who are weaker than he, to aid and protect the helpless, then I see no better place to do so than here. Until you, too, have proven your worth and we both can be welcomed home with open arms, I will remain on Midgard with you.”

Loki scoffs. “And when you grow angry with me for some slight or injury, real or imagined? Insulted when the people of Midgard do not bow to you in the streets? Bored of waiting for me to prove a worth that none believe I have?” His voice falters, cracks, briefly, and he turns his face away, crossing his arms over his chest before he asks, more quietly than Thor would have expected, “What if I truly can never return?”

Thor has to clear his throat before saying, carefully, “I understand better now, brother.”

Loki is silent for so long that Thor begins to fear he has gravely miscalculated.

He has never played games of words with such skill as Loki has. Perhaps wisdom would counsel Thor now to hold his tongue, but instead, more words pour forth. “And what is more besides. If I return to Asgard alone, when will I ever have opportunity to repay you for your many betrayals? I can hardly best you easily for all to see when you are a realm away.”

At last, the brittle, frozen tension seems to leave Loki. He tosses his head, and gives the front of his worn flannel shirt one last, imperious brush with his hands. “We shall see how _easily_ you may best me once I have fully mastered the mortals’ paltry magics.”

“Then you will let me join you?” Thor asks, his heart leaping like a salmon in his chest. He forces it to quiet.

Loki does not dignify that with a direct answer, but there is something in his caustic words that sounds more like the Loki that Thor knows of old. “You _are_ a fool, Thor. You know we have no money, no ID, and no weapons. And no car. Are we to cleanse Midgard of m– of _evil_ on foot?”

Thor smiles with relief.

“Actually,” he says, “I had a thought about that.”

…

The Impala speeds out of Lawrence, the raucous, joyous wails of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’ bleeding out through the open windows as it races through town and out onto the open highway.

It’ll be three-quarters of an hour before Sam and Dean get back to the motel and realise that the Impala is gone. It’ll be another two days before they’ll pick up a report on a police scanner about a classic car abandoned near the site of a car show, before they’ll go to check it out and find the Impala, undamaged, but with half their hidden arsenal – and credit cards - missing.

It’ll be another three and a half weeks before their travels take them to a diner in Indiana, where the waitress asks if they’re working with those other two handsome young FBI agents who’d been through a few days before. Whether it’s usual for the FBI to drive classic cars.

It’ll be six months of intentionally and unintentionally chasing the hunters in the ’62 Thunderbird back and forth across the country, crisscrossing their trail of fiery grave desecrations, misdemeanour charges, mysterious lightning strikes and unseasonal freezes, and grateful civilians, finding their fingerprints on efforts to stave off an impending apocalypse. Always seeming to arrive one step behind.

It’ll be a little more than a year before Sam and Dean finally admit they’re not going to catch up to them. That maybe they don’t need to keep trying.

After all, Luke and Tory hunt monsters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If SPN can have ‘angel blades’, then I figure I can weaponise Yggdrasil for plot convenience purposes. 
> 
> Speaking of which, I’m contractually obligated to mention Michael Chabon’s novel Summerland, from which I stole the idea of using ash baseball bats in reference to Norse mythology. And while I’m dropping names, a chunk of this fic’s resolution was inspired by belmanoir’s series [Flying from the blast](https://archiveofourown.org/series/20931), which kicks my heart’s ass in all the best imaginable ways.


End file.
